Okay, so January is over and I did indeed break the previous record for the most posts in one month on the Book of PDR. So take that 2006. I don’t think it will be much of a problem to make 2011 the most-post year either at this point. I’ve eleven months left and even if I’m guaranteed at least one post a week for comics, so this will be easy.

Speaking of breaking annual records, I’m sure we’ve had more snow this year than the last two combined already. The Winter here is pretty much in full form now. We’re covered in snow. And it isn’t even good snow that you can build things out of. It’s just crappy powder that gets in my way. Now, it isn’t that we’ve actually had a lot of snow this year, really. There’s snow sure, but it isn’t quite the “End of the Snoworld” that news networks are bandying about for other places. But those last two years amounted to about a week of actual snowfall and it rarely stuck around on the ground.

I have to wonder if the snowy winters of my youth really were as snowy as I remember them. In my mind I remember massive snowfalls that stayed on the ground for months, but I bet that if we don’t get another storm, this stuff will be gone by next week. Is it a Global Climate Change thing, or am I just misremembering? Likewise, are people really getting worse at dealing with snow, or did I just not know about all the things that would shut down with every single storm when I was younger? Maybe it’s those news shows who feel the need to blow everything out of proportion with terms like “Snowpocalypse” and “Snowmageddon” which just makes it seem like things are worse than they really are. Who can say? Who can say? Not me.

Patrick D Ryall has been on the computers for as long as he can remember. Starting with gaming on a Commodore 64 in the 80s I was at the forefront of the technological progress all the way to the present day. I was never doing much at the front line. Just standing around. But I was there.

And so I was on the Internet back when it was still pretty small. Not like super-small, but pretty small. I can remember those days when it was actually hard to find information on a topic you were looking for. Last week I searched Google for “show about a kid in a coma” and I totally found what I was looking for! As easy as that! In the olden days it was not that easy. I feel like I spent years going through Yahoo categories.

But in the end I never used my connection to the Internet to its full potential. If I’d known ahead of time I’d end up trying to create a website with comics and crap, I would have started early and built a fanbase and stuff. Instead, my time on the Internet was spent just looking at stuff that interests me and interacting with people as little as possible. Much like life in general.

The first time I remember joining a forum and participating in conversations and stuff was a board devoted to Quest for Glory Five, while it was in development. Wikipedia tells me that the game came out in 1998, so I figure my time on those boards was 1997ish. When the game finally did come out (not as good as its predecessor it has to be said. QfG4 ruled!) I moved on and left that forum behind. But it was around that time that I was combining my interests in World War Two with Superheroes and I ended up finding a website about World War Two-era Superheroes. Though there I found a link to some comic book message boards where I participated in conversations and became a small part of an online community. To this day, though I don’t post often, I still make sure to check the boards regularly and keep in touch with several people there.

That held me for a few years. But eventually my desire to be online more grew! I teamed up with my peeps and we needed a website! I remember at some point we came into owning LittleChoy.com but I have no idea how. And we never did anything with it, really. Oh well. Then came the Adam West Batcave on Geocities. That lasted for a while, but it was not enough. On Tuesday June 4th 2002 Contains2.com was launched. The Official Nonsense Homepage. There we could write about whatever we wanted and make stupid drawings and all that stuff. And so that is what we did. For a couple years. Eventually Contains2 started to die and I couldn’t hold it together myself so I came to this site, the Book of PDR making my first post on Friday April 28th 2006. And since then I have been here. Very here.

I avoided the Myspace thing, and probably some other social networking things, but I did end up on Facebook around Wednesday, April 18th, 2007 where, for my profile, I described myself as follows: “I’m kind of a weird loser with an immature attitude and delusions of grandeur. I claim to hate humanity, but it’s only because I love them and want them to grow up. I have a high opinion of myself, but no self esteem. I’m a goody-two-shoes that refuses to play by the rules. And I’m also kinda dumb.” and I have not changed it since. While I don’t do that much with Facebook, I am still there and like it.

So what does it all show? Not much. I guess it just proves that my history on the Internet is not all that interesting. So… History Post Done!

A little known fact about PDR is that he was born and grew up. Here is some photographic evidence that this is so. I originally gathered this collection of photos on Contains2 and it seems that, with this being the PDR Museum and all, I should reintroduce it (In two cases I seem to have saved the thumbnails over the actual image, but until I stumble across the photos again, this will do).

So here it is, a roughly chronological photo history of PDR growing up:

Even being called in unexpectedly to work last night can not prevent me from giving you a ton comics this week!

There are so many comics by PDR this week that yesterday I gave the bulk of it to you. That story stars myself as Agent Durning and the Honourable Kiiip Williams as Reg Lincoln, Hunter of Evil Monsters. What’s more, the pictures of Kiiip were taken like eight years ago for a photo story that I never ended up doing on Contains2. They have finally lived up to their destiny. This also means that those comics are in keeping this month’s unintentional theme of PDR Nostalgia.

And as I hinted at in that post about old PDR stories, here’s a comic strip I wrote when I was nine or ten that was redrawn yesterday:

It presupposes that you are familiar with that whole sword in the stone concept. Do kids today still know about that? I do like that even at that age I was amused by completely oblivious idiots.

Also in that post I mentioned Little Choy. I got to thinking “I’ve been meaning to do a new Little Choy” and so then I did.

Although I have had a color scheme in my head for Little Choy since the very beginning, I refuse to color him. It would probably be hideous.

And I also made this:

That is not technically any nostalgic PDR reference, but I did create it in the style of Photoshop-drawn comic that I used to do much more often in the Contains2 days.

Also, the Phone Guys are doing something too:

Can you handle how many comics there are?