The Dave Clark Five got a second nomination for the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame this year – I was hoping they’d get in while all five members were still alive, but, sadly, that’s not going to happen now even if they do get in: Denis Payton, the group’s saxophone player, has died of cancer at the age of 63. (BBC News has an article here.) The member of the group I had been worried about was Mike Smith, who has been in the hospital since breaking his neck in a fall in October 2003 – I didn’t even know Denis had been ill!

Hopefully my next post will be a little more cheerful and have something to do with comics.

Today is Beethoven’s Birthday… and how better to celebrate than with a series of sprite voting bonus strips to mark the occasion?

(Okay, yes, I’m sure there are much, much better ways…)

In the first one, Floyd is running a sale on shuttle fuel to celebrate. In the second, the rumormongers are planning the day’s celebration. In the third, Linton thinks Beethoven is a security risk.

Happy Beethoven’s Birthday!

Due to my backup computer’s continuing tendency to reset itself (particularly when I’m in the middle of something important), I’m trying another one. This one seems to be working fairly well so far, apart from having a hard drive that at times sounds like a noisy steam radiator! Once I managed to convince it to use the scanner and printer, I was back in business. Though I did notice that the graphics program I’m using now doesn’t have the same idea of what a 56-point font is as the one on the previous computers. (I wound up switching to 78-point to get it to come out the same size!)

Since over a third of the month is past already, I think it’s time I put up some new bonuses! The first one is an alternate version of Saturday’s strip (the last one I did on the first computer) before I slightly reworded the last panel, and the second one is the first attempt at today’s strip with the font size a bit off. (Not to mention the different drawing and dialogue…) Thanks for voting!

Like the unreal alternate universe in today’s strip, I’ve been having some technical difficulties… My main computer has died and won’t reinstall Windows, and my backup computer likes to reset itself unless pretty much everything has been disconnected from it. Fortunately, I did manage to convince it to go online (or you wouldn’t be reading this now), and got the scanner working on it, so hopefully there won’t be any interruption to the daily update schedule!

Z7 updated today – their situation has not improved (or really changed much at all), but the Gordon Dimension hasn’t forgotten about them!

Meanwhile, back here at V3, the events in today’s strip are being discussed in today’s sprite bonus strips, by Linton and Prentis, and by The Rumormongers. Thanks for voting!