Great lecture/talk by Jack Stamp on Why Music Matters:
Archive for ‘TFBC News’
It’s been a crazy couple of weeks in the Brown household. Both my husband and I came down with the flu (probably H1N1) and both girls have been sick on and off. Add football season into the mix and there’s not much free time to go around.
I’m going to be doing some work on the site to get it ready for the Christmas season. To help pay for webcosts, I have an affiliates page plus banners, so if you or your parents are going to be doing any kind of shopping online for the holidays, please be sure to check here first.
I’m also going to be moving the website to a new host in the next few weeks, so there may be some downtime while that’s getting switched over.
Have you joined Swagbucks yet? What??? You haven’t? Basically you get “Swagbucks” for just doing seaches on the internet, and then you can trade those points in for prizes, giftcards, and other stuff. I think I’ve gotten about $50 in Amazon gift cards so far.
And to celebrate Halloween coming up next week, here’s Furman’s band performing Thriller! Yea Furman!
Thanks as always for your patience! I’ve got a lot going on in my personal life and not a lot of personal time for comics! But I will update it when I can, so be sure to follow me on Twitter or join the mailing list to receive notifications for updates.
Hope you’re having a great marching season so far!
Here’s a great (and a little sad) article from the Washington Post called Pearls Before Breakfast:
Can one of the nation’s greatest musicians cut through the fog of a D.C. rush hour? Gene Weingarten set out to discover if violinist Josh Bell — and his Stradivarius — could stop busy commuters in their tracks.
And here’s the followup to the article with questions to Josh Bell.
OK – I have really attempted to try to get some computer time the past few days, but I just don’t think it’s going to be possible until the girls go back to preschool late in August and I have a few hours of uninterrupted computer time. I might or might not get a comic done this weekend, but I can’t promise anything. They don’t start back until August 24th, so there may not be any comics until then. Just bear with me.
Thanks for your patience the last few weeks with the website! I’ve been ultra busy and haven’t had much time to myself (and the computer) these days. I’m hoping to get some more stuff organized on the website in the next month. Be sure to catch me on Twitter for updates if you haven’t already!
And for your listening enjoyment, here’s a Catcerto featuring the Klaipeda Chamber Orchestra and Nora, the piano playing cat! Composer Mindaugas Piecaitis composed and arranged this piece as an accompaniment to Nora’s Youtube clips.
I feel like the only time I update the news is when I won’t be updating the comic. That’s the case for the past two weeks.
Good news! My husband got a job – yea!Â
 We are taking a short trip to visit family, so I won’t be updating the comic. Last week, I was really busy with Vacation Bible School at my church doing this:

I’m the one on the left.Â
Thanks for your patience during my time off the past few weeks! Between vacation/visiting family and lack of computer time, it’s been hard to be able to update the comics. I am also hoping to update the website design somewhat before the new school year starts, but we’ll see how that goes.
I haven’t checked it out yet, but I’ve been getting a lot of comments from friends about the NOVA: Musical Minds program on PBS. I haven’t seen where you can watch the full program online yet, but I’ll update the website/blog if I find out more information.  I believe it originally aired in June. Hopefully they will rerun it. In the meantime, check out NOVA’s website for some really interesting information about music and how it affects us and our brains.
I haven’t written much about Michael Jackson since he passed, but while a lot of people are probably tired of hearing about him and think the coverage of his death was overblown, I personally think it speaks to the power of music about how Michael Jackson’s music and influence could unite people all over the world of different races and cultures. I personally grew up during his heyday, so I feel like part of my childhood died along with him because his music defined that part of my life.
I hope you are having a great summer so far, and for those of you who have started or are about to start band camp, stay hydrated and wear sunglasses and sunscreen!
Don’t forget about Swagbucks! They’ve even got instruments that you can purchase with your swagbucks!
I’ve got a lot of reasons (and excuses
) for my lack of updates the past two weeks, but needless to say, I fell behind on a bunch of stuff and the comics fell by the wayside. I’m headed out visit family, so unfortunately there won’t be a comic this week either. Hopefully I’ll get back on track soon.
Hope you all have a great 4th of July! Don’t get burned out on Stars & Stripes Forever!
In the meantime, check out this video (marching Segways?) from Trumpet1 on the forums!
Yes, the current comic will be an ongoing storyline, so check back next week for more BAND NINJA comics!
In the meantime, want to earn some free stuff just for doing your normal searches on Google? Check out Swagbucks. Swagbucks is basically Google + prizes. You search with them just as you would with Google, but the key difference occurs randomly when you win Swagbucks, which can ultimately be redeemed for gift cards, books, posters, video games, MP3s, and lots of other stuff! And yes, it’s legit! I’ve been using them the past week, and already collected14 bucks (and I don’t even do that many searches).
Here’s the comic that went for the Ebay auction a few weeks ago! It’s customized and everything, so keep it in mind before Christmastime, because I’ll be doing it again. As a reminder, you can choose which comic in the archive you’d like for me to redraw for you, and you can get it customized the way you wish (within reason, of course)!
In other site news, I unfortunately upgraded the website without reading up on the ComicPress support forum, so now the previous/next buttons don’t work properly. They navigate to news articles rather than the comics. Hopefully a fix will be posted soon. In the meantime, you can always browse the archives.
Edit: They are working again!




