Photography Challenge #1: Sterling Engine

The Challenge

24 publish-worthy (by my own standards. As in, they're good enough to share. I'm a hobbyist photographer, after all) of this Sterling Engine:

This one doesn't count

The Constraints

• Subject of the photo must be the Sterling Engine.
• Must use my DSLR body.
• Lens choice is free, and may vary.
• Minimum of three published photos each week.
• Starting the week of 1 February 2016.

Home Run #25: Hiatus 5

Originally published on 26 February 2003.

Home Run #24: Hiatus 4

Originally published on 24 February 2003.

Home Run #23: Hiatus 3

Originally published on 12 February 2003.

Home Run #22: Hiatus 2

Originally published on 10 February 2003.

Home Run #21: Hiatus 1

Originally published on 7 February 2003

When in doubt, write in some self-deprecating humor. At this point, I really was terrible at drawing the female form. And I really was practicing furiously on my sketchpad.

Home Run #20: Re-Launch 5

Originally published on 5 February 2003

Joke's on me. I'm publishing from a Linux box now.

Home Run #19: Re-Launch 4

Originally published on 3 Feburary 2003.

Home Run #18: Re-Launch 3

Originally published on 31 January 2003.

Home Run #17: Re-Launch 2

Originally published on 29 January 2003.

Home Run #16: Re-Launch 1

Originally published 27 January 2003.

After a five month unscheduled hiatus, Home Run came back. I'm pretty sure nobody missed it.

The hiatus was unscheduled because I had but two story arcs in my sketchbook before I went live. Once I burned through those, I had nothing. The immaturity of the characters meant that they were not yet talking in my head, so coming up with anything -- and I mean anything -- was exceedingly difficult.

On the plus side, I did get back on the horse.

And immediately broke the fourth wall. Again.

Home Run #15: SLACKER 11

Originally published on 21 August 2002.

Home Run #14: SLACKER 10

Originally published on 19 August 2002.

Home Run #13: SLACKER 9

Originally published on 15 August 2002.

Home Run #12: SLACKER 8

Originally published on 14 August 2002.

Home Run #11: SLACKER 7

Originally published on 17 July 2002.

Home Run #10: SLACKER 6

Originally published on 16 July 2002.

Ten comics in, and I break the fourth wall.

Home Run #9: SLACKER 5

Originally published on 12 July 2002.

Home Run #8: SLACKER 4

Originally published on 11 July 2002.

Home Run #7: SLACKER 3

Originally published on 10 July 2002.

Home Run #6: SLACKER 2

Originally published on 9 July 2002.

Home Run #5: SLACKER 1

Originally published on 8 July 2002.

Home Run #4: Beginnings 4

Originally published on 7 July 2002.

Home Run #3: Beginnings 3

Originally published on 6 July 2002.

Originally, Delivery Guy was intended to be a recurring character. That never came to pass, however, as the main characters developed.

Home Run #2: Beginnings 2

Originally published on 5 July 2002.

Home Run #1: Beginnings 1

Originally published on 4 July 2002.

And so it begins. Independence Day (in the United States) was a deliberate choice for a comic strip ostensibly about a character breaking out on his own.

Home Run: Dramatis Personae

Cast

Joel
First Appearance: 04 July 2002
Our intrepid main character, Joel broke out on his own at the beginning of the strip to become yet another self-employed software engineer. Being a prototypical geek with the social skills to match, we're not sure if that was an all-together good idea.

Walt
First Appearance: 10 July 2002
Walt is a mentor figure for Joel. He's been around long enough that nothing seems to phase him. Walt is the rock in the storm. The Voice of Reason. The wise old(er) man. You get the idea.

Harv
First Appearance: 10 July 2002
Harv is a counterpoint to Joel and Walt. Confident in his business sense and engineering skill to the point of bravado, Harv is out to become a self-made success, no matter what -- or even who -- stands in his way. Since he took an in-house consulting job with a large telecom, we haven't seen much of him in the strip. Probably because he's working insane hours.

Cheryl
First Appearance: 28 February 2003
Harv's girlfriend. Her shtick is that you never completely see her face. We came close on Thanksgiving 2003, but a glass used in the toast saved the day. Since we don't see much of Harv any more, we don't see much of Cheryl, either.

Toby
First Appearance: 09 April 2003
Walt's daughter. She's a self-employed accountant, although she seems to excel at everything she chooses to do. Except, perhaps, cooking. She's an avid cycling fan. Her productivity drops dramatically in July when the Tour de France is running.

Joules
First Appearance: 25 August 2004
The daughter of two physicists who had a strange sense of humor, Joules is charmed by Joel. She may be the only character with a 'real' job. Presumably she's working her way up from the bottom to the top. The lack of mention of her career choice might lead someone to believe she is down with that. Or this character description could be somewhat contrived to place physics puns into a rather dry cast page for flavor. Joules is the owner of two hypoallergenic cats named Achoo and Gesundheit.

Recurring Characters

Nicolas Claus
First Appearance: 20 July 2004
Chief salesperson at the local Lotus dealership. Joel thinks he's Santa Claus.

Home Run Redux

From 2002 to 2009, I drew and published a webcomic called Home Run. I have since stopped paying for the URL, so the strips have been lost to entropy...

...until now.

With the help of the Internet Archive Wayback Machine (because I misplaced the strip database with all the story names in it), I am reconstructing Home Run and republishing it here. Perhaps Google will take better care of it than I.

The plan is to post complete story arcs in groups, with full dialog transcriptions, and maybe some commentary. All I have to go on is the incomplete scraped comics archive from the Wayback Machine, my original Photoshop work files, and memories.

Let's hope it's more interesting than all the comics I stopped following that did this.

Edit: Transcription, from a data-entry standpoint, sucks. You're on your own to read my handwriting in the early strips.