Duck Goes Moo!

Well, I have to admit there hasn’t been a post on here in a very, very long time.  I’m not sure what I may be looking to do with this site.

I have a hidden LiveJournal account for posting private personal stuff, which I don’t want to post on this site.

When I look over my posts they are mostly just funny little articles everyone else has posted about too.

So really I’ve been trying to ask myself: “What do I really want to do with this site?”

I’ve been toying around with the idea of moving all the content from my old comics site to this site, and complimenting all articles I post with quick little comic illustrations.  Less posts overall, but make them longer and higher in quality.

The main issue is if I really want to keep the old posts.  They are nice for garnering clicks from search engines, but they would clash with the new format.

Well, I’m still thinking about it all.  I would like to keep this site;  just not sure what to do with it.

Well, here we are.  I’ve dumped my own proprietary blogging software and gone with WordPress.

I think I got all the info moved over just fine.  I did decide to drop the other posters from the blog and all their posts.  Sorry, but it was kind of a silly idea to have this be a multi-person blog.

Originally the idea was for DuckGoesMoo to be an online e-zine of sorts, but really I have enough projects to manage as it is.

BTW, the design here is just temporary until I get this WordPress thing properly skinned.  I also need to add in my old smilies.

Well, I went and bought another domain name. This one was a bit of an impulse buy, as I am not quite sure of what to do with it.

The main reason for getting it? Because it’s a seven letter dot com, why else?

Actually, part of the reason I got it was that my company, Mid America Web, is getting ready to go global and is looking for a less “localized” name. I was thinking of names for our global DMA while checking domain names for availability, and on a lark I decided to see if webstem was taken… which it wasn’t.

Come on, it’s a dot com and it’s only got seven letters and it actually spells something. You gotta love that.

Well, no one else was excited about the name “webstem.com”, so now I’ve got the domain name and not sure what to do with it. Any ideas?

You know, I was so proud that I wrote my own little blogging system, but I have to say that after putting AllGoogly.com on WordPress that I don’t need to reinvent the wheel anymore.

WordPress is awesome. It really is. It’s a joy to use and has plenty of nice plugins.

So, without much further ado, I am going to be migrating all the posts and comments from DGM into WordPress. That shouldn’t be too hard, though I haven’t checked out the database yet.

Hey, it was fun building this all from scratch, but I really don’t have the time anymore to do this sort of thing anymore, plus I am starting to lose my desire to code in my spare time.

Yes, I said it. Charles Guthrie is starting to get tired of coding in his spare time. It’s true.

My younger self would be outraged at such a concept, but that guy was kind of a jerk so he can go ahead and be mad. He’s just jealous because I’m in the future now and he’s stuck in the past.

I have posted the first AllGoogly.com post. You can see it here:

http://www.allgoogly.com/

Also, here is a sample from the site:

Yay!!!

duck tries to moo
charles
what goes with duck
book bazaar bellevillel il
nascar mmorpg
duck went moo
geico
geico kash mascot
tim conway hitler puppet
rax roast beef ingredients

These are the first ten search engine hits of the year for Duck Goes Moo. The “Charles” one is a bit odd. I don’t know how a search for “charles” would have gotten anyone to my site; I’m sure there are millions of other sites that would rank higher for that. Perhaps it was on a local search.

“The inherent flaw of reasoning in Marxist and Communistic philosophers and lines of thought, is the notion that those who hold all the capital should be deposed and overthrown. They are not to be removed from society or even despised. They are to be used and disposed of like any other tool or livestock”.

“Let them think they are in charge. Let them think they hold all the power. Give them the giddy joy of believing they are the ones pulling the strings.”

“Stroke their egos and flatter them until they give forth the capital needed to create the great works of mankind. Let them think they are the hands that hold the painter’s brush or the patron saint of artisans and geniuses.”

“Let them bask in the glory of the brilliance of others believing themselves to be the sun itself. Let them call themselves the Illuminated Ones and call us their servants, their workers, their slaves.”

“We know who are the farmers and who are the fruit ripe to be picked. They only hold the power we afford them; if they ever no longer please us or serve any use they will be pruned and burned with the refuse.”

I recently redesigned my company’s website: http://www.midamericaweb.com/.

Let me know what you think (criticism welcomed) and if you see any graphical or typographical errors.

I need to add a couple of people to the “Meet Our Staff” page, but I can’t remember their last names… I’ll add them in when I see them tomorrow and ask them sheepishly what their last names are.

My old art teacher, Ron Isom, recently uploaded a picture that I believe includes me on end on the left:

Also included are some old friends, Todd Whatley, Rebbecca Whetstine (my first crush), Ben Gaa, and some others whose name I currently cannot remember (sorry…).

I first started trying to draw comics about two years ago. The idea was to try to do a daily comic in hopes that I would then get enough skill to one day be able to make a political cartoon called “Strange Bedfellows”, which I talked about in one of the first posts on this blog.

Here is the first daily comic:

I struggled around for a while trying to find a good style, trying some different random ideas:

and to some degree I began to copy the humor of Toothpaste for Dinner:

and Natalie Dee:

after two months of making comics I stopped, though I started to go into the political realm a bit near the end:

I briefly tried to make a regular scifi/furry comic called “Changing Gears”, but I eventually decided I lacked the drawing skill to draw what I wanted to draw and decided to reboot the series. Still, when I look back, it wasn’t that bad, but it wasn’t the comic I was wanting to make:

Then a year later I decided to return to comic making with a slightly new style:

I still mostly came up with quick, random ideas, but I kept trying to up the quality of the images I made:

Then I one day stumbled upon a new way to draw, also adding in shading, highlights, heavy lines, and more of a focus on creating interesting characters:

This entertained me for a while, but then I decided to add a common format with an interesting scene and characters with a quote at the bottom:

The style developed further as I became better at drawing, shading, and inking:

I tried to keep things clean, but some immature moments popped up here and there:

but none-the-less I was getting better creating characters and scenes:

and eventually I had come full-circle in my comic drawing and I had finally developed enough skill to start work on my original idea:

I tried briefly to keep up the work with another side project called “Situations Which Do Not Require a Cat”, but the idea eventually fizzled out. Still, there were some good issues of that:

So for now I am just going to focus on “Strange Bedfellows” and see if I can make a new one of those at least once a month. I really don’t have the time these days to spend making comics, but I want to keep developing the skill out in case I ever do get more time or somehow start making money off of it all.

Either way, I had some good times cracking myself up here and there.

My fake teeth have broken once again, so another hundred or so is going down the drain. ARGH!

I am seriously considering going to the SIUE dental school and paying to have a bridge done, as it will be way, way cheaper.

I suppose this is my punishment for not posting any news or comics for over two months. I have been extraordinarily busy lately, so that’s a valid excuse, I guess.

Apparently, I lack offensive support.

I may have popped a rib out of place and back, or at least that is what my doctor told me. I was reaching around a large table to fiddle with the computer below it when I heard and felt a snap in my lower left abdomen.

It’s hurt pretty much since then, but only when I move certain ways or poke at it. For a while I was possibly thinking an organ or a stretch of intestine busted, but the fact I was still walking around and pondering such a thing and not on the floor dying was proof enough nothing severe had happened. In previous years I would have driven to the emergency room, convinced I had seconds to live, but I’ve learned since how to identify when my hypochondria is getting the best of me.

Still, the pain was weird enough that I decided to go see my favorite doctor (who, yes, happens to be a pretty lady) and she decided I had just popped a rib in and out of place and gave me a prescription for painkillers to dull the pain, which she said should go away in about about two weeks if I take it a little easy.

It’s not a really horrifyingly bad pain, but it’s enough that I am a thankful for the prescription. It hurt quite a bit to tie my shoes or pet a cat at my feet, two actions I do a lot.

I’m also cutting back on the caffeine while I’ve got some good meds to deal with the withdrawal symptoms that come from not constantly drinking coffee.

Believe it or not, there is a wikipedia entry on the phrase Great Googly Moogly.

Even more interesting is the wikipedia entry on the word Okay.

When I ever get a fortune cookie from a Chinese restaurant I often pocket the piece of paper inside and then leave it on my nightstand when I eventually empty my pockets at night.

These fortunes often just kinda disappear after a while and I’ve never quite known where they go… until recently.

My cat Jane has apparently been picking them up and hording them in some secret, undisclosed location, and has now begun occasionally bringing me a random fortune in her mouth every few days or so.

It’s mildly unnerving to have a cat walk up to you, make obliging purring noises, and then drop a piece of paper with a prediction or bit of old wisdom printed on it. She of course wants me to play with her with the piece of paper, which I do, but sometimes the fortunes are actually pertinent to the current situation… eerily so sometimes.

About a week ago I was sitting at home wondering if I should clean out the litter box or let wait until tomorrow. I feel Jane rubbing up against my leg and then see the piece of paper flutter out of her mouth at my feet. It says, “Do Not Put Off Tomorrow What You Can Do Today. Jane looks at me expectantly and I pat her on the head and change the litter.

And just today I was feeling some pain from constipation that I have been suffering from for the past few days. I began to wonder if it was going to go away or if I needed to see a doctor. Right on cue is little Janey with a piece of paper. This time it says, “Serious Trouble Will Bypass You”.

Wow, not sure if that means good news or bad news.

It makes me think I should create a bunch of my own little slips of paper and put chores or reminders on them like, “Wash The Dishes”, or, “Make Sure Car Insurance Is Renewed And In Car”.

Well, this is the third week in a row I haven’t drawn a cat comic and I haven’t even been working on the character designs of “Strange Bedfellows” and “Changing Gears”.

I just haven’t felt like drawing lately, and have spent more of my time being social and working on some experiments with Flash, one of which is a Civilization clone I’m currently calling “Nephilim”. Right now I’ve made some great progress on a terrain generator for the game and have been working on some of the game mechanics. It will have an AS3 front-end with a PHP and MySQL back-end. I might even try to make it a FaceBook app, but that might just be silly.

Then again, who am I kidding, its not like I will ever really finish any of these projects I keep talking about, not unless I stop working my real job and such. Either that or just pick one hobby and stick to it instead of jumping from thing to thing.

Maybe I should keep things to just one comic and just one Flash game at a time, and drop the other hobbies of studying consciousness, studying Chinese, learning how to cook fine food, doing experiments on artificial intelligence, blogging, attending counter-cultural events, goofing on cults and secret societies, trying to make a Wii home-brew game, composing music, trying to discover the nature of the universe, pondering the void, studying to take the GMAT, writing books and short stories, building robots, altering the meme-scape, trying to lose weight, trying to stop the Illuminati, getting into political punditry, working on a stand-up comedian act, experimental theater, etc…

I wonder what my next hobby will be, perhaps trying to create crossword puzzles. That sounds like fun.

If they made a movie about my life, it would be titled “Misappropriation of Funds”.

I’ve decided that I am not mentally competent enough to handle my own finances.

Does anyone know a good accountant?