I’ve had a massive programmer’s block over the last three weeks, but finally I got somewhere and the biggest part of my admin program is done. Which is good, because my brain decided if I didn’t get this part done over the weekend, I was going to have to draw comics of myself explaining the situation until I did get it done, and none of us would want that.

I can’t show it to you as it exists, but I wanna show it off a bit so here are a few screencaps of it in “action”. The questions editor would be even harder to illustrate this way, and anyway I got six screencaps done and got bored, so that’s it. Though I should probably figure out some way of doing a video cap.

Though now that I’ve finally been able to schedule them, I learn that I have enough comics to update until about August 16, which is a week under six months. Which means that since I’ve started in the beginning of January, I’ve only lost one week’s worth of backlog.

Which is pretty cool, but I realized I have to start scheduling comics I’m currently drawing to the end of the queue, because otherwise I’m just going to push older ones back farther and farther until I’m embarrassed to publish them.

<spinn> I’ve been calling her “pinch face” for like three years now, the story finally needed to be told
<spinn> man just imagine that going lips-first into limbaugh’s airspace
<spinn> “CHLOE KISS RUSH LIMBAUGH NOW!” “I KNOW jack I am TRYING to do that you KEEP interRUPTing me” mwwwwaaahhhh
<Craig> I think her main tactic in doing her job is just to scowl the required data straight the fuck out of the mainframe

First, I almost want to apologize for today’s comic being another Half Life 2 ref (well, tangentially, anyway) so soon after the last one. But I liked the fact that I could say I drew the last two weeks’ worth of updates recently, rather than using up my backlog. I was worried that I would draw months’ worth of comics and just let ‘em pop out on their own and wonder what the hell I’m gonna do when they run out, but fortunately I still seem to be drawing occasionally.

Though I’m trying out drawing teeth in my cartoon mouths, which I don’t typically do, and it feels weird. I feel like I drew dentures on myself.

It wasn’t until after #249 went live that I realized I’ve probably been staring at these ads for too long. I wonder if the next Scribs in that series is going to be about a magical fuzzhat, or something.

I got a few entries for that non-contest I started last week! Which is cool, though I will tell you that if it was a contest, I’d totally be winning.

Man am I amused about this comic. Possibly because I spent a lot of time refining it. Usually the first draft is pretty nearly the final, but on this one I screwed up words, art, and the punchline on the first pass, and it’s probably the most overly-edited Scribs to date. But I’m really glad I did, because that “thank you” about knocks me over every time I read it. I’ve been bouncy about this one for the last day and a half, glad I finally got to publish it.


In other comic news, I randomly ran into this comic, where the artist drew something but kind of had some difficulty working out the details. I decided to punch it up a bit. It was actually more fun than I’d expected. If you’d like to give it a try yourself, here’s the blank version, and if you get any good ones, post a link here, or upload it to my SpinnWebe facebook page maybe? I think users can upload there, though no one’s tried yet, as far as I know.

There are a number of times in my life I’ve seen some grumpy guy go on a whole rant about how a given community is against him, or doesn’t let in new people, or shuns what’s different etc, and that’s why he’s being treated unfairly. And I’d think calm down, man, you just have to try to be part of the group instead of fighting against it. So now I think karma is starting to mold me into that guy.

My latest aggravation on that front is Reddit. I know it’s not meant to be my own personal comic advertisement machine, but hell, there are “share on Reddit” buttons everywhere on the web, and I think my comics are good, so I share them. (In fact I don’t share all of them, just the ones that I think are pretty good.) I shared Figure 4 which I thought was pretty good, and it scores 1 to 3 points depending when you load the page, which I don’t get, but it suggests around 8-ish people voted it up and 6-ish people voted it down. And I was like, man, tough crowd.
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I like to look at Scribs’ ratings on Alexa occasionally, and I see that the site is in the top 2 million sites on the planet. And in the last week, it’s in the top 1 million. Nevermind that Alexa says that any rankings under 100,000 are unreliable…I’m clawing my way up to statistical relevance!

Also, in Top Online Comics (voting link to the right), I’m currently #6, which is kinda cool, but mostly because barely anyone’s using it and it’s mainly on the strength of my home-Starbucks-work voting, but what the hey.

Also!
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For some reason I feel the need to explain the See Also updates more than actual Scribs. Well, maybe not “explain” exactly…ah hell I just like chattin’.

Figure 4 happened at work. Heard that as a guy was walking by in a hallway. Was a very “if it weren’t for my horse” moment for me, but instead of getting eight months’ worth of standup out of it, I got a Tuesday update.

Figure 5 was after Debb and I got supermarket sushi (“what, the gas station was fresh out?” Craig asked). I opened it up and there was a really pointlessly small amount of wasabi in it. “Geez, lookit this,” I said to her. She looks and says, “that’s rude.” And that was when I decided I should take it personally. That was an insulting amount of wasabi.

Comment I just found in my comic update scripts, that I forgot I wrote last week.

function doSingleUpdate($data, $update_time = 0) {

/* while this is all about inserting comics, I'm generally assuming I'm just inserting one at the end of the current comic list. not really planning on inserting a new one in the middle of previously released comics. if I want to do that I can do it manually for fuck's sake, why am I like worrying about this like it's air traffic control */

The score goes up to: Admin interface stubbornly refusing to get done, 143; me, 0. So in the meantime I do little things like draw the next See Also for Tuesday, and make a few changes to the sidebar. Got a page with many of the ads I’ve made so far, which have been kinda fun.

Also I’ve signed up for several web comic ranking lists with votes n stuff. I was thinking about getting fully involved with them, but all the vote incentives, watching the numbers, the constant pleading…it’s like trying to sell Amway to your relatives. So I just have them there, and if you feel like clicking through to vote, fine, and thanks. But ain’t no thang.

Figure 2 came about because I ran across Small Things Eating Big Things and drew a couple for it. Its web interface reminds me of the way I usually wind up doing web interfaces: quirky, fun to put together, works in a way that amuses me, and probably ultimately irritating for the user.

I’ve had some reactions to the Series Two Scribs art, and responses have been more mixed than I’d expected. It didn’t even occur to me that some people would prefer the previous minimal style over this; I’ve just been thinking of it as “better”. Fortunately I’m at a point where I’m happy with it — usually this feedback would make me all stupid and second guess myself, but nah, I think it’s okay. Actually right now it’s still sloppier than I want, but the later ones are pretty good. Not sure how much time it’s actually going to take to get to those, though.

Oh, and P.S.: for those of you who read the comic via RSS, I’ve decided I’m leaving the comics in the feed. I’ll just have the question answers linked to the site, so you’ll just have to get a taste of the site every so often.

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