It’s not that I didn’t want to keep working on the comic. Of course I did. It’s just that I thought it’s life as a gen-AI prototyped comic was done. It started life as a proof of concept for the family writing content, After that, I thought I would use the pages to find an artist to work with me on the series. But then that never materialized either.
Finding an artist seems like the thing I ought to do. I want to support comics artists, and it's how proper comics are made. But it's hard to find an artist to work with, and the economics just don't make sense for a tiny web comic. I'm also really slow at working, juggling this as a side project.
There's also this – I really enjoyed working on Hartwell as a self-produced comic.
I feel bad about that. I don't want to live in a world where generative AI tools take work away from real comics artists. I'm also super conflicted. I think using generative AI tools can lead to new kinds of work and also empower slightly artistic folks like me to realize our dreams of making our own comics. I'm really interested to see where this kind of tooling and art can go.
So all that to say, I'm going back to working on Hartwell as a comic I make fully myself with the help of generative AI tools. I know there could be some controversy in this, and likely some folks will be disappointed I've made this choice. But I also just really want to get back to work on my comic. Let's just see where it goes from here.
Wow, has it really been 10 years of Apple Music? In some ways, it feels like Apple Music has been here for longer than that. I was a Beats Music user before it became Apple Music. A decade is still a decade.
To celebrate, Apple has released a 10 Years of Apple Music: Top Songs playlist. It features the 500 most-streamed songs of the last decade of Apple Music. Some great songs in there, to be sure.
I've been keeping this playlist on shuffle and repeat.
I've been behind on streaming superhero shows. It has taken me a bit to catch up. I had yesterday off, and now today, for the 4th of July holiday. The nice thing has been catching up on series I've been behind on. One of those is Daredevil: Born Again.
No spoilers – here are my thoughts on the series.
First off, I liked it, but I didn't love it. There are elements that left me scratching my head, but overall, I had a good time with the series. I'm excited to see where season 2 goes. If I have any "meh" about this series, it's just that it seemed to be setting up for a season 2 more than standing on its own, which is a weird thing to write, given how enthralled I was as I binged the series.
The first episode hits with a bang, and then the show settles into what feels like a completely different direction. This shift in tone – I don't know if that's accurate, but it's clearly a shift of some sort – left me unsettled for a couple episodes. Once the series hits it's stride, I was all in.
There's a lot to watch here. That may also be part of the series's problem. Lots of characters, lots of subplots. But wait, are these subplots or the actual plots? Who's the villain here? This, of course, becomes clear as the show reaches it's conclusion, but I wasn't sure along the way. Again, this is partly a strength of the series and partly it's weakness.
Characters and more characters in this Daredevil reboot
Fans of the original Netflix-based series will find lots to like here. The street level fights are the same intense, gritty action realism that we all loved from the originals. There are some added elements like Daredevil swinging around the city that just don't work quite as well. Those elements, while a nice touch for us comics nerds, feel too comic-booky compared to the grittiness of the original series.
There are also a couple cameos that I'm not sure if I loved or not. As one of these characters came on screen, I literally gasped and thought, "Wait, is that [...]?!" And then, I was like, "Oh hmmmm, why are they in this show?!"
If you haven't caught on yet, I've got mixed emotions everywhere with this show. I'm glad Daredevil is back. I'm also glad Disney seems committed to this series. Charlie Cox in particular is perfect as always. What great casting!
To wrap up, I'll say this – the series really gets to an interesting place by the last episode. I'm legit excited for season 2. As I mentioned above, this is also a problem with the series. The show doesn't have a satisfying resolution. Great comics find a way to tell a complete story and leave you wanting more. With Daredevil: Born Again, I was mostly just left wanting more.
I found Mitchell Hashimoto's My Approach to Building Large Technical Projects via Simon Willison's link post. Man, everything in this post is golden. I think I agree with every word. This is definitely how I approach building software. I especially love the focus on getting to something workable as soon as possible.
Building a demo also provides you with invaluable product feedback. You can quickly intuit whether something feels good, even if it isn't fully functional. These aren't "minimum viable products", because they really aren't viable, but they're good enough to provide an engineer some valuable self-reflection.
I love that phrase "self-reflection." We need more of that in software these days.
I also love the idea of building software for yourself. I've got some things I've been meaning to work on that I need to get back to. As I do, I'm going to get to a workable demo as quickly as I can. Maybe I'll have something to show here soon.
And so, the new year is upon us. Wow, what a year has it been. This past year saw my family settling into our second year in Atlanta. My younger daughter started her senior year of high school. It's hard to believe, but my wife and I are almost empty nesters. My older daughter finished school at Aveda Institute and started working full time. I changed jobs myself and then went back to grad school. Then, I had to withdraw. I also managed a fair amount of writing, publishing the first part of my comic series Hartwell and managing a short story or two.
Again, wow. What a year!
In looking ahead for this coming year, I expect more change. My youngest will go off to college somewhere this fall. We'll likely take an extended trip this summer to celebrate her graduation. We'll see where 2025 leads soon enough!
With all the change that happened last year, this site languished a bit. I did write more on here than other recent sites I've maintained. I want to do more in 2025. More writing. More software. I'm also going to be making some site updates to freshen up the look and functionality here, too. More details on all this as it develops.
Here's hoping your new year is exciting and filled with wonder and good things. Cheers!
Best laid plans and all. The intent was to go to grad school at SCAD here in Atlanta. I was thinking I would write, grow myself as a writer, and with MFA in hand, go teach when I'm done working as a software developer. Ha! Joke's on me.
I made it to midterms at SCAD and then life intervened. Or rather, everything that could go wrong did. There was a change in CTO where I work. Lots of meetings ensued as we all scrambled to figure out what this meant for our teams. I had to work a couple late nights. Not a lot of after hours work, mind you, but SCAD has a strict attendance policy. Those couple of after-hours nights combined with a week I needed to miss due to an on-site event for my team, and in the end, I had to withdraw. My time at SCAD, for this quarter at least, is done.
There are options that would enable me to keep at it. I could take online classes, but much of the appeal for me, beyond the degree and where it could lead, was the in-person classes. I work online all day for my day job. The thought of doing that in the evenings for school seems not fun. I could try again and take a lighter load. That's an option, too. I've got some figuring things out to do.
It's been a little quiet here lately on my site. I want to say "I've been busy," but that's the lazy too-common excuse. I've been focused. There, that's it.
I just finished up with a nice 5 day vacation for Dragon Con. It really is a magical time of year for me. I started going 7 or 8 years ago with my oldest daughter, and now it's a family thing. My wife and younger daughter join in with us now. It's a great time. The girls are older now – 21 and nearly 18 – so they do their own thing. My wife and I do our thing. We meet up occasionally in a panel. It's a blast.
I took a break from writing anything serious during Dragon Con, either creatively or here on my site. It's my one time of year to check out from everything – professional work, creative work – and just take it all in. Be present. It's a fun convention but also a great reminder that I'm not just the things I do. It's my yearly reset.
I'm back at some creative writing now, and I have a draft of a thing I'd like to get done before I start grad school on Monday. Best laid plans and all that, I'm not sure I'll make it. I'm putting in the work, though. I'll have more to say about that when it's ready.
I'm also trying out the socials more again. Threads and Instagram are my mainstays, but I'm trying a bit of Blue Sky too. Come say hello there if you like. I have thoughts and feelings about these sites, but I do like to connect with other like-minded folks. I'm making a run at it again to see if that's still possible with these type of sites. I hate the term "social media" but it is the social element that draws me back. I'll let you know how it goes.
Just wanted to post an update here so you all know I'm still alive and well and writing. Until next time.
Part of what I'm interested in exploring as I go to grad school at SCAD is writing on the web. Not just writing on the web – though I am interested in how creative writing on the web can itself be an object of art – but also, I'm interested in writing on the web as compared to traditional publishing. I've been thinking about this a lot lately.
I’m not sure if publishing is a good word here, but what I mean is writing in books, magazines, news papers, or generally anything of a print nature. Despite the very digital world we live in, traditional print media remains and is going strong. I think this is great, but obviously, writing on the web, in ebooks, and in other forms of digital media proliferates. There's literally writing every where we look. Why hasn't reading on the web or in ebook format overtaken physical books at this point in our culture?
I first started thinking about this several years ago when my kids were younger. They've grown up on the Internet, and yet, they still prefer reading physical books to ebooks. It's not as strange to me now that I'm used to it. Also, it's a well understood thing – ebooks are a nice compliment to the traditional publishing business. Readers and non-readers alike prefer physical books. I mean, if I'm being honest, I like physical books better myself, which also seems like it should be out of character for me. I've built my life and career on the web. I'm a gadget guy too. I've had just about every iPad or Kindle there has been. Still, I prefer a book in hand to an ebook.
Why is this?
Beyond the obvious benefits that come to mind with physical books – they're cheaper, safer to carry with you, easier to flip between pages, etc. – there is something "real" about them compared to ebooks. There's an actual weight to the object in your hand or in your backpack. Even before you've read a word, you know what you're in for when holding a book in your hand. The same can't be said of a book on your phone or an e-reader. Writing on the web just doesn't have the same weight.
This makes sense from a software point of view too. Digital work is inherently ephemeral. Web sites are here today, gone tomorrow. Digital bits are easy to copy, which scared writers initially, but digital bits are also easy to delete. When something can be so easily created and then deleted, what does that mean for the content itself?
There's a follow-on to this that is obvious now that we've been living in the internet age for a few decades. The web and digital content leads to an inherent lack of authority. The web doesn't have the physical weight or the the authorial weight in quite the same way physical books do.
I can think of a few counter examples of web content that has managed to rise above and throw its weight around.
The New York Times has done a great job of reinventing itself for the web. In the comics world, Lore Olympus has all but defined the webtoons genre of comics but has also gone on to sell books in traditional book stores. If you want an example of a book that's better online than in print, check out the book Making Something Wonderful: Steve Jobs in his own words from the Steve Jobs Archive. The Internet Archive has also done a great job of preserving all that has happened on the web.
There are some patterns emerging here – a care for the craft, a focus on the work as an object of art. Preservation, making something that lasts. Putting the work in as many hands across as many formats as possible. That seems like the way forward for us.
Maybe this approach isn't all that different from what artists have done at other times in our history. Make art. That's it. The way to lend more weight to writing on the web is to focus on making great art, making something meaningful and lasting, even as everything else on the web comes and goes.
I'm excited to share that I will be starting graduate school at SCAD this fall. I will be attending SCAD in Atlanta and pursuing an M.F.A. in Writing. I am very excited to be going back to grad school!
I say "going back" because I did do a semester of grad school at Auburn, after I completed my undergraduate degree in English. SCAD will be an all new experience for me, both as an art school and because it's been a few years since I was in school. I'm looking forward to the journey ahead of me.
I mentioned in my Just typing away post that I was applying to grad school and that this site would be about that journey. Now that I've been accepted, that becomes all the more true. Many of the things I'm exploring here – creative writing, the web, digital formats, generative AI, and comics – will be themes of my graduate work at SCAD. Stay tuned!
“Anderycks” is an online username or handle that I’ve been using for a few years now. It’s my social media username and my gamer tag. You can find me as @Anderycks on just about any platform. It seemed a natural thing to use the same name as my website’s name.
The word itself is an amalgam of my real name “Deryck” and my long time Second Life username, “Anders Falworth.” I put “Anders” and “Deryck” together and came up with “Anderycks.” It represents the blending of real life and digital life, or what’s possible when humanity meets the digital. I pronounce it like And-er-icks, but it’s a made up word. Say it however you like!
