1/30/2004 - My old host, virtualave.com stopped offering free hosting on January 13th.

I wouldn't have known it if Phil hadn't told me as it had been almost 2 years since I had updated the site. In those two years many things have happened. In late 2002 my OS crashed on my PC. At the time I was running Windows. That crash was pretty bad, I was unable to access the hard drive to salvage any of my 3D work from the past couple of years, and all attempts to salvage my files were pretty much toast. It really made me angry, and I decided to give up using Windows, and to try and make the switch to Linux.

As such I had to find a new host for mrbun.com as I had plans for updating the site, and including my artwork as well as the mrbun comic strips.
I know that such a crash can happen with Linux, or any OS as well. The real fault lay in my not having backed my PC up regularly, despite having a very fast CD burner. I still cannot believe I was such an idiot, after using PC's since the age of 12 and having gone through the same thing several times in the past with different kinds of systems (Amiga, 386 with DOS/Windows, etc...). The only computer I never had problems with ever was my c64, but then again it didn't have a hard drive and was a pretty simple machine.

Well, anyway. I switched to Lindows 3.0 about midyear, and then 4.0 a couple of weeks later when it came out. 3.0 was heaven, all of my hardware worked great and was recognized easily (whereas with a Linux distro I'd tried 2 years previously I'd had issues), Flash worked great in the browser (Flash support was something I'd read was a problem with Linux over the years), and everything was nice. 4.0 was a different story. I had issues with network support, Flash files played horribly, and there were a bunch of other things as well. I got a refund thanks to the generous folks at Lindows.com, and after all I'd learned about Debian and KDE in trying to fix Lindows 4.0 I decided to try a Linux LiveCD.

I tried Knoppix, and have stuck with it since. It did everything Lindows did, and the issues I'd had with Lindows 4.0 that cropped up were ones I found fixes for on the Knoppix forums, or figured out myself. I also got Nvidia's own drivers installed so my videocard would use all of it's features under Linux, which I didn't have under Lindows.

My 3D files are gone, I have backups of some of the early Mr. Bun strips, and have copies of all the scripts, including two which I never got around to producing after getting married, and my life taking on some normalcy. I also have sketches I used early on, which I've scanned. I'm going to be looking for an Open Source PDF creator, so I can scan the scripts in with my notes from the first 6 episodes and post them to the site. I am also going to scan the print copies of the strip I made. I lost the good quality JPEG strips when my Windows OS/HD fried... so I'll be posting PDF's of the first 6 episodes as well, and also the GIF copies I have from the original site. I will be posting screen res images from the sketches, and also a bunch of other artwork as well.

I'm hoping to take mrbun.com in a different direction, to use it as a creative outlet for more than just the Mr. Bun comic strip (which will still be here, who knows.. Maybe someday I'll take up the reins again). I've got some ideas for other strips, and hopefully with Phil's writing talent, and my artistic skills (such as they are) we can put something online to entertain... or I'd hope so. I've got 5 gigs of space with my new host, and I'd like to use it.

It may take me a few weeks to get on my feet as far as the site goes. I'm also hoping to get into doing 3D again at some point, I've started using Blender recently, but I'm still a baby and I have ordered the Blender manual from the Blender project. I used to use Ray Dream Studio, and have Cararra but I'm weaning myself off of Windows software... and since RDS is no longer supported or maintained, and Cararra isn't free like Blender I cannot continue to rely on it because I have other places that me and my family need to spend money... and commercial software isn't one of those places anymore if I can help it.

Anyway, if you're viewing this site it's likely you're a friend, or someone who for some odd reason was either a fan (hah, I think we only had one) or just came here by accident. If you're a friend, then thanks for coming by and please check back later... I'll probably let you know to look anyway once it's been changed. If you're a fan of the comic, thanks for coming back and I am deeply sorry that there isn't anything old or new to look at for the moment. If you're someone who stumbled across this place by accident, then you'll probably never come back... because honestly I know that I stumble on sites all the time and never come back because I forget, or because it doesn't look interesting.. And frankly this is pretty dull at the moment... but thanks for coming by anyway.

Well, that's it for now.. At least there is something here.

Stephen