Occasionally I get the urge to draw something quick n stupid…and then I draw Scribs! Ah ha ha ha ha. No, I mean. I get an idea like Figure 1 and feel like putting it somewhere, but it feels kinda dumb putting it up as a Scribs update, so I’m thinking sometimes I’ll put something up on off-update days.

Figure 1 actually happened, more or less, on Tuesday. A co-worker pointed out that Guy 1 is actually kind of intense and high-strung, which made it funnier that he was the one saying I had too much coffee.

The first new question-as-update. So, I drew a load of these since September. And I knew I wanted to work a new style but wasn’t quite sure what. So I said, well, just start drawing; it’s Scribs. Whatever you do is fine, you’ll probably come to something you’re happy with, just draw until you find something.

Which means this one looks like crap to me and I’m really itching to do it over. Not like it’d be hard to do, I’m just trying to fight against my fussy nature a bit and let it be. It’s not until three or four weeks from now you’ll see comics where I’m happy with the style.

Except for the next six or so, because I redrew them anyway. sigh.

I kinda feel like I cheated myself out of an intro fanfare. Now that I think I’m finally down to a text updates format on Scribs that I’m happy with, I wish I had it up last week so I coulda started with a big ol’ HI! and all that. But I’ve integrated my blog onto the Scribs page, as I’ve said, and I think this’ll do several things at once: get more action on the comic than just the comic; get me writing in my blog more, and give me a relatively lower-hassle way of putting updates here. But it still took some learning and programming, so my geek ancestors are appeased. FOR NOW.

Getting a bunch of traffic, but not much interaction yet. Though I’m basically getting the traffic by buying it. I gave myself a $300 budget for ads, which I’ve only gotten a third of the way through so far. But really I’m hoping for some reader engagement, because I’m thinking that’s going to be how I get enough ideas to keep this up. I think probably I spent the last three years storing up Scribs ideas in my head, but when I do it on my own, the passive idea creation happens at a slower rate than my preferred update schedule. I possibly gotta get more stimulus from outside my head to be able to maintain it.

The idea of a separate comments section for each comic just wasn’t sitting well with me, so I figured out how to integrate my SpinnWebe blog on to my Scribs page. So YES BRAIN I COULD’VE JUST WENT WITH WORDPRESS/COMICPRESS IN THE FIRST PLACE SHUT UP SHUT UP SHUT UP.

More things I want to say here but I spent too much time trying to push to get this done before I went to bed, so zzzzzz

I’ve drawn 82 new Scribs so far, and I had to finally decide on what order they’ll go in, so I printed thumbmails and numbered ‘em. It just looks neat.

Like I’ve said before, I feel like I’m actually doing a comic now, rather than just scribbling crap down. Seeing them all together like this reinforces that for me. And I had some funny line about revealing the state of my desk, but I forget it now but it was wicked awesome.
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I find this fascinating. Not the comic itself, but its existence and its self-perceived import.

I’m doing some ads for my sites, which is how I came to notice it, the referral logs said I got a few hits from it. I take a look, and okay, it’s of a certain class of comic where objects are put together and text is put around it which some people find entertaining. I scroll down to the associated blog post.

Two things about micro-story:
1 – Just because Devil can look like a red dot DOES NOT mean he was the red dot from when they went to Japan. it’s just coincidence.
2 – I think I could have done another two strips of just Baron taking off hats to reveal other ones. I have to move towards the end though. Ah well, maybe another day.

It just struck me as so self-important that I had to keep reading. Read the rest of this entry »

Usually, when I have something of mostly personal interest that I want to write about, I try to work out an interesting way of saying it. In his case I gotta apologize ahead of time, because I expect I’m going to ramble in an uninteresting way for a bit. This is mostly going to be Scribs minutiae.

So, I’m starting Scribs again. Typically I keep this sort of thing secret until the last possible minute, but that’s probably because I want to reserve the right to give up on a project if I lose interest. In this case, though, I have about 65 comics ready to go, so I’m in a good updating position. I’m shooting for having 75 before I start, which represent six months’ worth of updates on a M-W-F schedule. I’m hoping that’s enough buffer to stay ahead of the inevitable lapse of motivation.
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I seem to have traded my World of Warcraft obsession for a dual Team Fortress 2/Demigod demo obsession. It’s sort of at once better, and more insidious. Neither TF2 nor Demigod are engrossing enough to sink a lot of time on, but one can capture my attention for a half hour, and then as I try to get back to programming, the other one seems interesting enough to spend a half hour on. And then it’s 12:30 and I have to get to bed.

I do have to admit I’m having more fun with them than I was Warcraft. Turns out I’m not all that great at the game, really. I got into a really good guild, and then was surprised to find that I was just mediocre. I thought for a while I’d be able to tolerate being a second-rate player in a first-rate guild, but in the end my pride couldn’t hack it. And as the only other choice available to me was being a first-rate player in a second-rate guild, I didn’t really have much that I wanted to do in the game anymore.

I did make a bit of distance on A1, though. It’s grabbing captions in an ajaxy way, but I have some polishing to do on that part. I’m kind of lost on the whole sorting/voting part, though, but I haven’t really sat down and planned it out yet, which I really have to convince myself to do. I was getting really frustrated last month because I figured I should just be able to sit down and start typing out code and then the damn thing could be working already, but I should know better than try to start coding a project without getting a clear spec from the client.

There’s some hope for these old bones yet — I see some use in the new-fangled geegaw they’re callin’ The Facebooks. I did it all completely wrong and I still can’t figure out how to bookmark to it properly, but I can at least tell you this goes to the last (and first) thing I’ve posted there. I’m going to try to get into the habit of using that for small updates, as I’m more willing to write things there and less willing to go through the effort of writing a full post here, so we’ll see how it goes.

Yay! Works so well, apparently, that I sifted 97 good entries out of about 1400 last night, which the program tells me is good for updates until June 27.

The last bit was whether the automated updating was working, and since this morning has given us Ruth “The Master” Bader-Ginsburg, I suppose so.

All background stuff, but the end target is to make it easier for me to edit entries. I started working on that, and ran into the incorrectly escaped quotes problem which needed some programming, and then noticed the database is clogged with hundreds (maybe thousands) of spam entries which just made me sleepy to think about.

Duplicated database to a temp db for working: check.
Modified database, program, updater to use a more rational schema than the crap I had originally: check.
Fixed the entry form escaping quotes: check.
Cleaned up existing escaped quotes: check (see also: check).
Removed about 1500 spam entries by searching for obvious spamness: check.
Installed anti-spam filter: check, and surprisingly effective already. This is the kind of thing that’s clogging up the database; since last night I’ve gotten these. My code adds “:SPAM:” in the entry so I can see it worked, and if that test goes well, I’ll just have them quietly deleted.
Modified daily updater: check, but haven’t tested it yet.

To do: my admin interface.

I know it’s not much, but I got the A1/IADL archives functional, and you can currently see them here.

Like every other thing I record, this one feels like it’s about 90% of what it really should be. But, eh, I’m just gonna let it go.

dont_listen_to_arcanta.mp3

Several years ago, Debb and I went to a Faith and the Muse concert, and the opening act was this guy, Arcanta. He was all chanty and reverby and kinda world-musicky, which was kinda neat but kinda tiresome, but the main problem was that he went on forever. The little venue had strict show end times, so FatM had to cut their concert short. This really kinda ticked us off, because they only rarely tour.

So, I wrote the lyrics for this song that night, and been kicking em around in my brain ever since. Finally recorded the damn thing.

Oh yeah! Forgot, Debb wanted me to point out that The Ninja-Zombie Show, that I did for Scribs (remember Scribs?), is now in the discography.

I wanted to align A1 pics left to have something different, but I guess I shouldn’t do it just for that reason. The centering just works best for me; here’s my current version. That navigation I want, I’ll do it somehow on the right, maybe with some div popup thing.

Anyone using IE7? I’m not sure if the layout will work properly there; if something goes wrong, the picture will be a little lower than the left and right columns.

I’ve been working on a song…here’s a draft version of a clip:

arcanta2.mp3

It repeats once for context. The first part’s where the main action of the song’s going to happen, and then the key change is the bridge to the next part.

I can’t seem to prevent my stuff from sounding Casio-demo-buttony, though. Still not sure how to tell this software to fill the sound out better.