In 2008 I took a trip to the USA and had to buy some insect repellent in Philadelphia. I was excited to see that it promised to ward off “chiggers and no-see-ums”, which is a promise no British repellent has ever made me. In the UK, these flying pests are known as “Jamie and Spencer” – but may not be exactly the same animal.
Learn more about these made up animals created as a US psyop.
I’ve had a few messages over the last week about unusual stuff in the RSS feeds for some of my less-used URLS – chiefly, bobbins.horse and destroyhistory.com. I let all my niche sub-site URLS go a couple of years ago. If you subscribed to those feeds, just delete them. The only up-to-date RSS feed I have ever used is the Badmachinery.com one, no matter which poorly thought out URL I might have been putting my comics up at.
This is my last word on really simple syndication (RSS), extensible markup language (XML), and irresponsible domain name purchase (IDNP) for the forseeable future.
My Gumroad page (where you can download DRM-free PDFs of my various books) has been updated. I’ve added Solver Volume 1 (which includes the Circus Windows mini), Savage Sword of Susan, Giant Days: Snooker Could Be Better, and the Murder She Writes 15th Anniversary Edition. Plus, there are three new multipacks – one with everything in it, one with just the Scary Go Round collections, and one with everything new, for anyone who bought the old 2024 ‘EVERYTHING’ multipack. I think I have covered all possibilities!
(If you bought Murder She Writes in the past, the new edition has been added to your Gumroad Library).
I have a few in-person events (in the UK) coming up:
Saturday June 27th – MACC-POW, Macclesfield
Saturday July 11th – Big City Reads: Meet The Authors, Nottingham Central Library 4-6pm.
Wednesday August 5th – Big City Reads (John Allison in conversation with Laura Snapes) 5.30-6.30pm
Saturday October 10th – SCARF, Sheffield (free entry!)
Sat/Sun November 14-15th Thought Bubble Festival, Harrogate
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The two Nottingham events have to be booked in advance, but they are both free.
A few people have been experiencing 431 errors when trying to view the site. I think this was a problem with cookies that one of this site’s plugins (Comments Like Dislike) was creating. I’ve deleted the plugin and added code to clear its cookies automatically. But that’s why you can’t “thumbs up” comments any more. Comment below if you’re still having issues and I’ll look for what else might be causing the problem.
In the last couple of days something very strange happened, another webcomic linked to me. This used to be common 20 years ago, but now is so unusual that I looked at my stats and couldn’t work out why they were up for several days in a row. So thank you to the creators of Cassiopeia Quinn. I have been thinking for weeks of instituting a new links list to (free) webcomics I like, but wondered if it wouldn’t just be archaic and weird. Once again, our old friend the cosmos, indeed Cassiopeia itself, has sent me a sign. So I will proceed.
