Okay, it's still not Monday, but I'm only one day out this time which I'd call progress. Although since it's earlier in time one could argue that it's in fact regress. Nevertheless I'm sure we can all concur that some form of gress has occurred.
And on to the highlight of the update! This, uh, thing.
So I've started what I'm very loosely and incorrectly calling a 'Newsletter'. All being well with my predictably inconsistent future self, it'll be an eclectic monthly menagerie of all of the little bits and pieces I made and/or found interesting over the previous ~30.416 days.
Between comics, puzzles, wordplay, silly jokes, videos, fun facts, music, crochet patterns, origami instructions, maths facts and serialised stories, not even I know what'll appear issue-to-issue!
Of course this is all a bit presumptuous, after all there's currently just one issue. But a veggie can dream, no?
The concept was very simple: Make a little gaggle of goodies that willing participants can receive in their inboxes one random Sunday morning and spend a pleasing 10-15 minutes flicking through whilst resisting the urge to get out of bed. A return back to the days of fun little newsletters and blogs of interesting bits and bobs that make you go 'Ooh' and forget how dreadful the rest of the internet is.
I've left its format really rather open to accommodate my wildly swinging curiosities. Indeed the fact that I didn't start this in July's namesake month perhaps buries the eclectic lede I'm working with. If you have any suggestions for things you know often take my fancy that you'd like to see popping up in these then do please let me know! I'm always open to a little focused prodding.
Now you may well wonder why the thing I'm misnaming a newsletter is actually a blog post. Indeed it was originally designed as a newsletter, however due to anti-spam laws it transpires that all newsletters need to contain a contact address for the person/company producing it. This doesn't make a great deal of sense if you're sending them through a third party provider (as I intended to) since, well, they'd have to do the spamming on your behalf. Thus either they'd be whom recipients (who for some reason manually signed up to be spammed) would complain to, or if the creator were performing shenanigans then this third party would contact them with the address they privately signed up with.
Either way in lieu of a £45-per-month (😬) newsletter-exclusive PO-box, it'll have to squirrel itself away as a blog post for now. Please do share it around if you think you know someone who'll enjoy it though, that is after all the purpose. 😅
As you can tell this shan't be replacing these regular(ish) updates since, well, they're not updating you on anything much.
They won't, for instance, let you know that we've finished the thrilling finale of Sherlock Holmes: Nemesis on stream, only to be replaced by Arx Fatalis' new flavour of jank. They certainly won't inform you about our group gameplay streams of kaiju-knockabout GigaBash, nor its tonally-juxtaposed inheritor Supermarket Together. And the less said about its omission of friend doodle streams, not to mention Gartic Phone silliness, the better.
But alas parting is such sweet and sour sauce and I must bid you, as the French say, au live oil. Thank you as ever for your astonishing support, I hope whatever my output is transmogrifying into seems worth the investment.
I intend to return here-ish in approximately 13 days with news of a working draft of a highlight video, a comic starring Kay & Elle, some sneaky newsletter previews, adverts for commissions and maybe - just maybe - some progress on that darned elusive myth that is Chaos Chess.
Look after yourselves,
Crispy 💜