I’m back from vacation. We had an absolutely wonderful time. It was exactly what I needed, a very relaxing and carefree break from things. I feel rested and recharged. It was a really great getaway, Jamaica was gorgeous, and we were sad when the week was over, but at the same time, I’m happy to be back home. You can’t do what I do every day for four years, and not have it become a huge, almost essential part of your life. It may be busy and stressful at times, but I love my job, and I wouldn’t trade it for anything in the world. So back to the grindstone, as they say!

First things first, Digital Overload registration. I know you guys have been staring at the same newspost with this info for the past week, but I need to say it once more. Today is the last day to pre-register for Digital Overload at the $45 rate (and get the free t-shirt). We don’t accept registrations at the door, so if you want to attend, you need to pre-register. After today, you can still register, but the badge price will be going up and won’t include a t-shirt.

If you’ve sent in payment electronically thus far, your account should be marked as paid, or you should have received an email from me. If you snail-mailed your payment, I’ll be going to the post office today to collect last minute arrivals. Your account won’t show as paid until the your checks clear, but you’ll still get the $45 rate.

Ok, on to other things. Like, other languages. A very common request I receive is from people asking for my permission to translate Ctrl+Alt+Del into other languages. This is, in fact, something I’ve been wanting to do for a good long while. Actually, when we rebuilt the website in late 2005, we included functionality for displaying alternate versions of each comic, with the intent of doing translated comics.

I kept telling myself I’d get on top of it, and well, here we are more than a year later and nothing has been done with it. As with most of my side projects, I got busy and it got pushed to the side. And as with an increasing number of additional projects nowadays, I’ve reached the point where I realize that if it’s going to get done, I need help. Your help, to be exact.

And so I present, The Ctrl+Alt+Del Translation Project. It’s a fancy, official sounding name for a very simple idea. The short and sweet of it is that I’ve provided some forums for people who are interested in translating the comics to work on them in a universal format, that I can then easily use to create alternate language versions of the comics for the archives here on the site.

Obviously it’s going to be a slow process, and it will take quite a while to get the archives translated. But the way I see it, right now people that don’t read english can’t read the comic at all, so something is better than nothing.

So we’re starting with Spanish, French and German. I know there are other languages people want translations for, but I think we should start with these three and see how it goes. If it goes well, and we start making progress, we can consider some additional languages. The forums are here.

Apparently Lost Planet shipped while I was still in Jamaica. Ironic that I was on a beach in eighty-five degree weather and they’re trying to deliver me a game about a sub-zero planet of Snow Pirates, no? Anyway, UPS says they’ll try again today. That should keep me entertained until the Crackdown Demo hits later this week.

I’ll be spending the next couple of days trying to re-assimilate myself back into the real world.