What is Directionless? Who is Mike Hanley?

Directionless is a somewhat-autobiographical webcomic by me, Mike Hanley. It's called "Directionless" because it has little in the way of any cohesive focus. It mostly chronicles my "adventures" as a geeky college student, with plenty of embellishment along the way. I strive for weekly updates, but that rarely actually happens. The first four episodes were drawn during my Freshman year as a Film student in the College of Visual and Performing Arts at Syracuse University.

The comic then went on hiatus for... quite a while. But now it's back! A lot has changed: my old roommate left SU, I switched to the TV, Radio, and Film program in SU's Newhouse School of Communications. (What? That sounds like basically the same thing? Try telling that to the faculty. see what happens...) I even found a wonderful girlfriend, and now I've even graduated! Exciting!

As I said, the comic is largely autobiographical, however I will never hesitate to embellish if it make the story funny. It also may or may not keep pace with my real life (it's presently a bit ambiguous whether comic-Mike is still in school or not).

I also talk too much.

Being the massive geek that I am, this isn't my only website. Far from it. Here are some more of my online endeavors:

• Hanley Films - The central home for all of my film and video work, whether done in school, professionally, or just for fun. You can also find my resume here.
• Dev/Null42 - My blog. If you get the reference in the title, congratulations, you are a huge nerd like me! This is pretty much a place for me to say whatever strikes me at the moment.
• Medieval Mayhem - The old sprite comic I did in Junior High. Very different from Directionless, this silly little thing ran for 32 issues. I really need to move this somewhere else at some point, probably hosted here at Directionless. Also! I'm currently evaluating interest in a printed book of Medieval Mayhem's entire run. If this is something that would interest you, let me know at mike dot devnull, followed by shift-2 and gmail.com. (Can't be too careful with these freakin' spam-bots...)

There's a few other little places, though those are the major ones. I can also be found on Facebook, but please don't bother trying to friend me unless I actually know you in real life. I'll only reject it. Sorry.

Directionless (and Hanley Films for that matter) is hosted by Dreamhost. As with any large, inexpensive web hosting company, googling Dreamhost will get you a fair share of both praise and horror stories. Speaking for myself, I haven't had any problems, and highly recommend them. The servers are fast, I get an embarrassingly large amount of disk space and bandwidth, and it all comes pretty cheap to boot!

If you're thinking of starting with some hosting at Dreamhost, and want to support Directionless, please use one of these referral codes. I'll get a bonus towards my hosting bill, you'll get a hefty discount. (or more features, or both!) Everybody wins!

• MHANLEY50OFF - $50 off any new registration (This is the maximum discount Dreamhost allows!)
• MHANLEY40OFF1DOM - $40 off, and one extra lifetime domain registration. (on top of the one you already get!) I used a code like this one when I signed up, and that's how I have Hanley Films and Directionless running off the same hosting plan.
• MHANLEY20OFF1IP - only $20, but you get 1 Unique IP Address included! (If you don't know what that is, you probably don't need one.)

Dreamhost is pretty flexible with the creation of promo codes, so if you'd like a custom one put together, I can probably do it. (Various combinations of extra domains, unique IP's, and extra disk space or bandwidth. But I don't really see why anyone would need more space or bandwidth than what they give...)