Other Projects

Donate to the book fund for Mrs. Stow’s 4th grade class and get “Code Monkey Save World” stickers!

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UPDATE: You’ve donated more than $600! Just over $300 left to go!

UPDATE: You guys donated over $200 to Mrs. Stow’s campaign yesterday! I love you. Keep it coming!

I was inspired and moved by the amazing Kevin Church’s recent campaign to raise money for a teacher’s DonorsChoose.org effort to buy books for a class of Navajo school kids. So I figured I’d jump on the bandwagon and give it a shot!

Please consider donating to Mrs. Stow’s DonorsChoose.org campaign to get books for her 4th grade students in her Title I public school in Hereford, Texas.

If you donate $10 or more, email vm at pakbuzz dot com with your mailing address and I’ll send you some “Code Monkey Save World” stickers as a thank you.

Here’s an excerpt from Mrs. Stow’s appeal:

I have a group of fourth graders. They are fun, crazy, and love to be at school. I teach in a Title I school where my kiddos are from VERY unstable and low socio-economic homes. Our classroom is the only place they see books and we are in need or more books.
…

I’m not sure if any of you grew up in a home where you did not have a book. NOT ONE SINGLE BOOK! Please help us get these book collections for our classroom. These kids need them and they will always remember having fun books to read.

We’re all book people here, right? Few things are more important indicators of a child’s eventual success at school than having access to books. And this looks like a tremendous way to put dollars directly into a teacher’s hands so she can give her kids the books they need.

Please consider giving.

Thanks so much!

Open Thread – Question Time!

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Hey, friends. I’m taking a little break, so I’m opening up another thread for Q&A.

As usual, I’ll just ask everyone to avoid spoilers and to please not pitch projects or stories – I can’t read or respond to those!

Also, life is short, so nastiness or personal attacks against anyone automatically get deleted.

Thanks a ton, and fire away!

Love Rocket Raccoon? Please consider donating to writer Bill Mantlo’s ongoing care!

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rocket-raccoon

UPDATE: Mike Mantlo, Bill’s brother, sent along his thanks and this beautiful photo of Bill and Mike’s wife Liz. Your donations absolutely help improve Bill’s quality of life — please read on and keep ’em coming!

Bill Mantlo and his sister-in-law Liz, August 10, 2013. Courtesy of Bill's brother Mike Mantlo.

Bill Mantlo and his sister-in-law Liz, August 10, 2013. Courtesy of Bill’s brother Mike Mantlo.

If you love Rocket Raccoon — or Rom or the Hulk or the Micronauts or Cloak and Dagger or any of the incredible characters Bill Mantlo wrote during his prolific career — please consider clicking the button below to send your donation to Bill’s brother Mike for Bill’s ongoing care.

 

UPDATE: In a February Bleeding Cool article, Bill’s brother Mike said, “Bill was treated in an exceptionally fair manner by Marvel/Disney” and that Marvel “has made incredibly generous gestures,” which is fantastic. But the cost of Bill’s care remains enormous and any donations you care make will be greatly appreciated by the family.

Bill Mantlo has had a huge influence on me as a writer and reader. His “Micronauts” stories blew my mind as a kid and his “Incredible Hulk” run laid the groundwork for the themes I explored my five-and-a-half year run with the character. In the afterward to “Incredible Hulk” #635, I dedicated my run to Mantlo, and a while back devoted my Newsarama column to singing his praises and letting folks know how to donate to his ongoing care.

Thank you so much, Bill Coffin and LifeHealthPro, for shining a light on someone who brought so much joy to so many people.

And here’s a note from Bill’s brother Mike, reprinted from that Newsarama column:

First off, I send out a big THANK YOU to everyone that has helped support Bill over these past 19 years (!). Every donation, no matter how big or small, and every card or letter is greatly appreciated. Bill’s condition remains the same (he suffers severe cognitive impairments, anger, and depression), and these factors keep him very much isolated from “the outside world.” Aside from my visits, and the kindness of my beautiful wife and some of the attendants at the nursing home/rehabilitation facility he resides in, his contact with other human beings is virtually non-existent. But the support and encouragement of fans, and industry professionals like yourself, helps to bring a little ray of sunlight into his dark and dreary days. When I (or my wife) engage Bill in conversation, his spirit emerges and is as strong and pure as it ever was! So, once again, I can’t thank ALL of you enough!! I strongly believe in the power of practicing random acts of kindness, and with that belief I hope that ALL of your kindnesses will be returned to you many, many times over!

Cards, letters or donations to Bill Mantlo can be sent to:
Mike Mantlo
26364 East Pintail Road
Long Neck, DE 19966
Please make out any checks to “Michael Mantlo” — Bill’s legal guardian.

Open thread! Got questions? I’ll try to answer!

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Had a lot of fun with this last night, so I figured I’d try it again before plunging into the nightshift.

Ask me questions and I’ll try to answer ‘em!

I’ll just ask everyone to avoid spoilers and to please not pitch projects or stories – I can’t read or respond to those!

Also, life is short, so nastiness or personal attacks against anyone automatically get deleted. But y’all are cool, I know. 😉

Thanks!

Anyone know how to make iTunes stop doing this?

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Screen Shot 2013-08-11 at 10.32.19 AM

iTunes stops downloading podcasts if you haven’t listened to them for a while.

I don’t check or listen to certain podcasts every week. But I want to keep downloading them, because sometimes they’re no longer available if you miss them the week they’re released (looking at you, “This American Life”). So I’d love to figure out a way to have iTunes keep downloading, even if I’m not listening.

Any ideas?

UPDATE: Whoa, that was fast! Jason Snell found this script to take care of the problem!

Testing to see if automatic cross-posting from gregpak.com happens

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So I’ve been upgrading and updating gregpak.com, and this is just a test to see if things are working properly and links are going out to Twitter and App.net.

THIS IS ONLY A TEST.

UPDATE: That worked. Now let’s see if it sends it out again when I edit/update the post. I don’t want it to, but let’s see.

Site upgrade!

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So at long last, I’ve taken the plunge and updated to WordPress from the reliable but increasingly rusty version of Movable Type that had been powering this site for the past eight years. And so far, I really like it!

Some of the bonuses of WordPress:

  1. The site’s automatically optimized for internet-capable mobile phones, which didn’t really exist back in 2005 when I built this thing in Movable Type.
  2. WordPress is living, breathing code that’s regularly updated, which means I’m finally able to take advantage of some pretty common features like getting those sharing and like buttons at the bottom of every post.
  3. Transferring all my old posts over gave me the chance to get rid of category clutter and organize the indexes more simply. And now there’s a search function and a decent archive system that’ll let folks access older posts more easily.
  4. Much better interface for writing posts, with tools for auto-creation of hyperlinks. (I know, I know, y’all have had this for half a decade. But it’s fresh to me!)

I’m going to try enabling comments just on this post, so if you have any thoughts about the site design or discover any bugs or problems, please do chime in!

UPDATE: I think I broke the comments – they’re not working. Urg. So if you have any thoughts about the site, please feel free to let me know on Twitter!

UPDATE 2: I figured out how to enable the comments! Quirky thing — no “Discuss” module on the post page. But when I click the “Quick Edit” button in the list view of the posts, I got the comment control panel. Anyway, please give the comments a try so I can see if they’re working!