StickPrimo

So, I got into Google+ after all. That’s kinda news. Although, if you’re not personally in there yet, you’re not missing a lot at the moment. If you are in there, you probably are missing a lot—since there’s, like, seventeen of us to date, and few of us actually know each other.

But, that can change.

First of all: Here. Feel free to add me if [or once] you’re in there: 1.gremlin.net.

If you’re wondering: A) I set that up through gremlin.net because it’s kinda my primary site, B) I went with 1.gremlin.net because I can’t actually set up +.gremlin.net, C) I went with 1.gremlin.net also because the whole G+ system centres on +1ing stuff [kinda like Liking stuff in facebook.com], and D) I set it up in general because plus.google.com/112846916587136458632 is meaningless [I'm hoping they'll eventually allow customised URLs, like facebook.com have].

So, there’s that.

Also, and only loosely related: I got a strange message in the backend at google.com/adsense the other day telling me how I could and that I should set up the +1 button on various sites, allowing people to plus things up; I was about to do that anyway when G+ went just live enough to let me in. So, as I understand it, you can actually +1 things so long as you’ve got a GMail account [if it takes even that much], and google.com will record that you functionally Liked something, though in fact you’ll have PlusOned it.

Whatever it means, it’s in place here now. Which potentially wrecks my system for tracking Favourites, since there might be those who’d rather +1 a strip than Like it. So that’ll be something to think about, a bit.

Anyway: it’s a minor revision. Yay for progress….

StickPrimo.com being nine months old now, I guess we’ve had some time to figure out which strips are more popular than others, based on the siteside Like buttons. So I’ve gone through the three hundred strips to date and added each of those displaying at least ten Likes to the Favourites Tab.

Technically, this will be an ongoing process.

Three things to consider.

1) While the mere fact that I’ve uploaded a given strip suggests that, at some level, I must like it, there are those strips which, to date, I haven’t officially Liked. Since my sporadic forgetfulness indecision theoretically flaws the total outcome, I’m planning to go through—somewhat slowly—and Like those strips which I haven’t actually Liked yet. Technically, I could do all that over the next hour or so, but I’m not too thrilled about spamming the site to everyone connected to me through facebook.com a couple hundred times today. If I Like about a strip per day [and Like new ones as they go live], I should be caught up by the end of the year, without talking anyone into unfriending me.

2) A couple strips [which in fact I already Like] are hovering just outside the Favourites, having nine Likes each. So, if you Liked something which isn’t a Favourite, see who you can talk into also Liking it; it might only take one more click. Or, if you haven’t Liked a strip which currently has nine Likes, you could kick it up into infamy.

3) Favourites are those strips with ten to ninety-nine Likes only for the moment. However long that moment lasts. If and when strips start getting more than 100 Likes, I’ll revise the system and drop whichever strips then have only ten through ninety-nine. So, while there’s really no way to vote a given strip down, it’ll be possible to kill it off by Liking the hell outta a different strip. And then again, if and when strips start getting 1,000 through 9,999 Likes. And so on. Until facebook.com becomes our bitch.

Something else to consider, which isn’t part of that list—in fact, it’s barely part of this entry, except that I’m currently thinking about it: 2011 being nearly halfway over [more on that when Thursday's strip goes live], I’m starting to plot toward the inevitable anthological thing—probably a KindleBook, and possibly actual printed books too. To date, I’ve put off getting into any sort of merchandising, simply because I really kinda personally hate the idea of smacking a comicstrip on a TShirt [posters and bumperstickers could work though], and I haven’t really come up with anything cool enough to be a standalone; I’ve got a couple ideas for skateboards and coffeemugs and things, but nothing I’m in any massive hurry to go implement.

Thinking toward a book, though, is the sort of thing I do. When I’m not doing this, I’m writing real books. Just lately, I’ve been writing real books while doing this. So it’s kinda my area.

This would be a different sort of book, though.

For one thing: Since I got started on a date other than 1st January 2011, there’s the bothersome issue in which we’ve got this lump of strips from 2010 in here. Which isn’t actually a huge deal. It just means that the book isn’t gonna double as a calendar. Which it wasn’t gonna do anyway. Because that’s the sort of merch I’m really not into.

Instead, I’m thinking toward, like, Stick Primo: Year One [with Bonus Year: Zero], which would then have the strips from 25th August through 31st December 2010, followed by the 365 strips we should have from 2011.

But even that gets a little tricky, since I’ve seen what this site looks like on a Kindle. First: It looks terrible. You can’t actually get the hovertext on a Kindle, and then there’s the comments per strip and whatever.

As an actual KindleBook, though, I’d have a little more control. Meaning that it would still kinda suck, by the nature of the Kindle itself, but I could kinda tell it how to suck.

Probably, I’d have a Table of Contents looking something like this:

• August 2010
  • 25: Geek Poker
  • 26: Funniest Comic Ever
• September 2010
  • 1: Schroedinger’s Brat
  • 2: Vowels

…and so on.

Then, each chapter being a strip, it would headline with, like, 25th August 2010: Geek Poker, followed by the strip itself [that one being however unfortunately 16:9 instead of 8:9], then followed by the hovertext as its own paragraph: ‘Hovertext: Pi to the left of me; Fibonacci to the right; here I am: stuck in the middle with you.‘, then followed I suppose by whatever supplemental weirdness I may have written beneath the strip, and then potentially any discourse found in the Comments by the last possible instant before I’ve got to compile and upload the Kindling.

Supposing I plan to include the comments like that, you’ve likely got about six months left to go through and comment on stuff if you wanna become all famous. Although—and this just occurred to me—I’d likely retain only the usernames, ignoring EMail addresses and URLs and whatever else the Comments ask for; just because publishing EMail addresses is at best a bad idea.

So, consider all that an option too. Go through the site as it is by the time you read this, Like the strips you like, comment on the strips you wanna be known for having commented on once there’s a book, and whatever else we might have covered here today.

Oh. Loose suspicion. The book’ll probably be US$2.99 on the Kindle. In fact, that won’t be entirely up to me: amazon.com currently have a minimum price for any KindleBook compiled at more than X megabytes, and X isn’t a huge number. Just in case you needed six months of warning to collect three bucks and possibly sales tax together for when the thing becomes available.

But, more on that in around six months, when it’ll be more timely to talk about it….