This just in:
With the economy, and general decline of print, MAD Magazine is officially going quarterly with issue #500 in April. Found out through Tom Richmond’s post. The quarterly issues will have 8 more pages than the monthly issues, and sell for $5.99(cheap!). I hope they take full advantage of the web, it would be a shame to lose such a widely-known master of the magazine world whom I don’t read.

Also in April, Kenny Chronicles turns 1 year old!

Are you ready for the digital transition? Ready or not, the groundhog at engadget says we’ll have 4 more months of those repetitious commercials. They linked to a local ABC station as a source. [UPDATE: Apparently I was notified too early. It didn’t pass all the way. Read next blog for those details.]
[UPDATE2: Ignore the next entry, as it’s been mauled by the entry following IT! We’ll continue to get analog through June 12th, although some areas might choose to go ahead with the Feb 17th date anyway.]

I’m happy to say that I’ve been ready for the transition since mid-2008. We have 2 converter boxes and horrible reception on all stations. PBS has near-perfect reception, and I really like their new Create channel. On Sunday, I tried the stations again and got perfect reception on all stations, but today, only the analog stations busted through the sleet, and PBS.

For my first reaction to DTV, here’s what I recorded on July 29th…

(link)

Okay, so my source jumped the gun on the news that the bill had passed. It passed the SENATE, but not the House of Representatives. It got a majority vote, but 2/3 vote is required for that kind of  thing. To add to the confusion, that’s not the end of the story. This is what PC Magazine has to say: “The bill is not dead, however. The House can still bring the bill up for a vote the typical way, which allows for lengthier debate, the addition of amendments, and a majority rules vote, but that has not yet been scheduled.”

So, let’s just say it’s still on for February 17th, even if there’s still a chance for passing. Both ways have their benefits, but Feb 17th was the promised end to all these “ARE YOU READY????” commercials. Our local news has run it into the ground so much that I’m convinced they’re just playing the same video every day.

(EDIT: *sigh* read next entry, it passed)

If you buy a 3 oz. Endangered Species candy bar at Walgreens before July 31st, you get a coupon code for a free rental from Redbox(a $1 value!). I just bought one, and judging from the coupon, the code likely expires after 2 weeks. It can be used for one night’s rental. The coupon comes with your receipt.

Endangered Species candy bars donate 10% of the net profits to help support species, habitat and humanity. The chocolate itself is 100% ethically traded, bought from small family-owned properties. The milk chocolate bar was pretty rich, and actually tasted almost like dark chocolate. This is the kind of chocolate you savor. Mine has a photo of a sea otter on it!

Redbox is a DVD rental company that uses vending machines at places like Wal-Mart, McDonald’s and Walgreens. Each night’s rental is $1, no matter how long you keep it(unless you keep it 25 days, in which case, you’ve just bought it). It’s a very simple, straight-forward plan. Credit card is required.

Walgreens is like Wal-Mart, except smaller and more convenient. They have Deerfield Trading Company Premium Soda, which tastes awesome. They use real sugar, not corn syrup.

Do you create or translate a multi-lingual comic? Maybe you want to add a little local flair to your wording.

I have created the world’s first(far as I know) foreign sound effects dictionary. Cats don’t say “meow” in any other language(except Urdu). In fact, in Japanese, cats say “nya!”. If you want your sound effects to be understood in another language, or at the very least not draw away from the story because your spelling is weird, a dictionary is essential. Unfortunately, no standard dictionaries offer sound effects. I had to fix this.

My first plans were to create a list of Spanish sound effects on this site to help me with the Spanish version of the Kenny Chronicles. It would be nice if others could contribute, though. So I made it a wiki. This offers many more possibilities. Considering there wasn’t already something like this for other languages, and I do read comics in other languages, I decided to expand it. I’m starting with 6 languages, but I have a backlog of data that can expand that to 17 languages(not including Wikipedia). In fact, I still have a backlog of data(comic archives) for Spanish, French and German sound effects, so I still have a lot to contribute. I hope to eventually have every single modern language on there.

If your language isn’t listed, and you can contribute some sound effects, go ahead and create the page! Just do a search for your language pair(ex. “English-Russian”) and click “create this page”. The template will already be filled out with words that need translating. Complete as many or few entries as you want. If the language uses a different alphabet, you can use either the local alphabet or a romanized version. Preferably both.

Check it out at

sfx.kennychronicles.com