lol, I'm as shocked as anyone else to be posting on the forum again. xD I can't remember the last time I was here… since the first radio play? xD
I went out on my own to kinda spread my art around. I'm on a few other sites now, hoping to get noticed.
Good to kinda see the threads are still active, though. :)

I dunno what it is, but it seems that since I left here to host my comics on a site with exclusivity rules, I've gradually diminished to a state where I have little to no motivation to do much of anything creative anymore.

Part of it, I know, is due to the fact that I'm hyper-critical of myself and my own abilities… so when given the chance to quit doing something, I take it in an instant and excuse it by complaining about how much I suck at something.

But another problem was that on the new site… people that read my material were not very vocal. I could never tell if I was actually entertaining people, and I didn't have visible fans to keep me honest and keep me wanting to impress them in ways that would shove my self-critical nature aside. And it sucks, because I really don't think I can get that back now, even if I tried.

Either way, I started feeling a bit nostalgic for this place, so I've finally cleaned up my comic archives and started posting here again for the people that didn't follow me to the other website. I don't think it'll be as active as it was back in the good old days, but I'm sure I may end up feeling a bit better being a part of a creative community that actually DOES something, as opposed to the purely reader community at the other place.
Seems this place has gotten a lot less active, though .-.

I actually left the SmackJeeves forum on the account that it was -too- active, LOL. I kinda loafed around a bit and then realized it kinda wasn't really for me. There were people I probably could've liked for sharing the same interests, but I just didn't think I could hack it.
But don't feel bad, I feel the same way. Right now I'm kinda contemplating posting here more often just for nostalgia's sake as well– starting with finding the ‘most embarassing thing you ever did’ thread I recall from a year and a half ago and posting why I reported a June 31st error when there -ISN'T- any, lmao.
Boy do I feel dumb…

Please do! We need all the active peoples we can get ^_^

Oh jeebus it's dayam chilly here right now!!!!!!!!! Why didn't I organise to go back to the US again for a few weeks like the last two winters? whyyyyyy?????????
Ugh!

Stuk in the cold in Perth Western Australia. feck. I need more monnies :(

It's nice to see some of you guys again! Welcome back. :] Don't forget to participate in some of the other community stuff if you can- Lite Bites or other comics, the DD Awards, or the Radio Play!

I'm working on my ‘for your consideration’ image right now… it's the first time I've ever actively particpated in the awards like that. (I've always judged though.) I just think Old Batman is too fun. :3

Dunno how uber active I'm capable of being in that sort of thing, to be honest.
I'm still a spriter after all. And not even a good one, despite the opinions of a few people that would punch me for saying that =P

Yay, it's Skooool ^_^

———-

Oh man, I'm soooo tired. Why did I lie in bed playing Angry Birds Piglantis till almost 4am this morning? WRYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYyy??????????/ -_-
sooooo tired
dying

Dying is a shiz word. You'd think it would be spelt "dieing', ubut this way it looks like dyeing… I dunno, maybe your simplified Websterised US english is different in this regard.
Damn you Noah Webster!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Crazy school teacher. >:[

Nice to see some people coming back. If enough come back this might be a more active forum as a result. :)

Oh… found an old classic Glam Metal song. Enjoy. :)

Youtube Video- Poison “Ride The Wind”

People have been dying to be dead since Chaucer. Drapers have been dying with dyes about as long. Old English Degan versus deagan or some such rot? Roots that were originally different that became the same as English matured as a language. Well at least we got rid of gender cases along the way. Imagine if English nouns had gender like other Germanic languages.

Webster was out to rid the world of superflous “u”s because like many other Americans of his generation he hated the English. Fortunately the US had politicians and diplomats who were smarter than that and could keep their Anglophobia in check long enough to avoid any number of wars between 1814 and 1860. Even Andrew Jackson arguably the greatest Anglophobe ever in the White House had wised up after 1814. He knew the USA couldn't defeat the Brits and the Brits knew the USA wasn't worth defeating but would be a really nice place if only it wasn't for all those Americans.

Old Batman? I'd hate to pick a fight with him… I may get back into drawing again myself. Just gotta figure out how to do so without falling asleep. Makes me wonder though… why am I falling asleep while drawing? It seems kinda unnatural…

Don't mind me… just showing off my latest aquisition.

Artimage Classescort carrierUSS Glass Cannon.

Mildly depressed, down, down, down. Emoface T_T
Blah.
Need some alone time to get centred. Being around people is shitting me.

@lonne-
Don't carriers sort of go against all the things Startrek space action was founded on?
Ah, I ‘spose Star Wars won afteral with it’s silly WW2 flashy fighter/carrier paradigms.
Nice acquisition BTW.

ozoneocean wrote:

@lonne-
Don't carriers sort of go against all the things Startrek space action was founded on?
Nice acquisition BTW.

It goes back to the beginning of gaming Star Trek which predates Star Wars. Remember Roddenbery had served in Naval carrier aviation. Star Fleet battles from pre-Star Wars days had carriers and fighters. In the depths of the fleet was always the idea of the armed shuttlecraft and the ability to reach out and touch someone without having to send a star ship. This didn't become part of the shows until the runabouts of DS.9 but light private ships with tiny crews were always mentioned.
Put weapons on them and you have fighter-bombers. And when your enemies had them, so improvise and adapt. It's an easy force multiplier to have one warp capable ship carry a pile of smaller ships that are just impulse engines and weapons.

The same concept is behind carrier warfare where instead of big gun ships, you just have one ship carry lots of little almost expendable things that can carry explosive equal to one of those big shells and often farther.

All goes back to “firstest with the mostest.”

ozoneocean wrote:
Mildly depressed, down, down, down. Emoface T_T
Blah.
Need some alone time to get centred. Being around people is shitting me.

@lonne-
Don't carriers sort of go against all the things Startrek space action was founded on?
Ah, I ‘spose Star Wars won afteral with it’s silly WW2 flashy fighter/carrier paradigms.
Nice acquisition BTW.

It goes up against a few things. It's an escort, so it's designed to dish out a lot of damage, but can't take many direct hits (like the Defiant class). Yet it's a carrier, which is supposed to hang back and let its fighters do the work which this ship can do, but it only has one hangar so it's not a full fledged carrier craft. So the name I gave it is appropriate. I guess it's a fulfillment of its predecessor class, the Akira (both are named after anime). The Akira was designed to be a light carrier, but the carrier part didn't make it into the show apparently (I never saw the thing launch fighters).

@Bravo-
-that's a completely different principal to terrestrial carriers.
An aircraft carrier is nothing more than a small mobile runway and military base/communications centre. It's sloooooowwwwww and can only move in 2 dimensions. Fighters allow you to transcend some of those disadvantages- they can move through the air faster and further than a carrier on the ocean, for obvious reasons. And surveillance craft extent communication range.

Those issues don't apply for space vessels. The paradigm is utterly different. The only limitation is overcoming inertia for objects of greater mass, but due to all the other technological imaginings and gravitational manipulations involved in that universe that's a non-issue. The only purpose of carrier warfare is to give people something familiar to focuses on and play with etc.

Carriers have unsound logic in that universe… but getting people to enjoy it and have fun is more important than logic, r else why would there be any other humanoids in the galaxy apart from humans? Again- no logic, but such a thing is the foundation of the series.

Star Fleet battles is a reality invented by wargamers and naval warfare buffs by throwing their favorite bits of naval and air warfare into a vat and emptying that vat into space and then trying to make up the explanations afterward. And I was there all along building the models, collecting the fleet updates and occasionally playing.

Roddenberry was a WWII bomber pilot andwas great friends with naval aviators after the war even flying restored fighters. Roddenberry did wagon train to the stars which also owed a lot to C.S. Forrester's Horatio Hornblower. That was a navy independently operating cruisers and not a man of war in sight until the big fleets met. That was left to the gamers. Star Fleet Wars and Star Fleet Battles were very similar to Avalon Hill's Jutland and Bismarck but in three dimensions and ships being able to pivot in place.

But to make a game you need all the big ships so in came the carriers. One of the alien races in the original game was totally fighter and carrier based and provided the reason why the other combatants needed light impulse powered fighters carried on one large warp capable ship. The secret bit about the fighters was your phaser batteries would be overwhelmed by so many incoming small ships that they'd get through and really mess up your shields.

Back in the day if you played Bismarck, you played Star Fleet battles. But remember what those Stringbags did to the Bismarck, how are you going to stuff that into Star Fleet battles?

Reality or a good game? Got to be some trade-offs. And why are the ships all so colorfully marked like aircraft rather than simple name and number like the typical warship?

bravo1102 wrote:
And why are the ships all so colorfully marked like aircraft rather than simple name and number like the typical warship?

There's an ingame reason for that. Thanks to the war with the Klingons, the Federation realized it doesn't have enough captains for all the ships in its fleets. Hence why Lt. Commanders are now commanding the ships. But they have to be exceptional to be offered the job (as you find out in the tutorial when you first start playing, YOU are one of those). And I think to bring up morale a bit uniform standards have been relaxed a bit and you can customize your ship to your liking (within limits).

Of course all the customization options are there as one of the things that attract people to the game. So a lot of the player controlled Federation ships in the game tend to be bright and colorful. Klingon vessels, on the other hand… well… they're all warships so not a lot of options with them as far as paint goes.

Lonnehart wrote:

Of course all the customization options are there as one of the things that attract people to the game. So a lot of the player controlled Federation ships in the game tend to be bright and colorful. Klingon vessels, on the other hand… well… they're all warships so not a lot of options with them as far as paint goes.

I really should play. Looks like fun. Or at the very least get a ship.

It's the ships and uniforms that got me into the game. It's not fore everyone, but it's good to try it out to see if you like it or not. I'll warn you though… you'll start out with either theMiranda class (Khan's stolen ship), the Centaur Type (an Excelsior saucer section with a torpedo pod and nacelles attached under it), and some new light cruiser ship… Don't know why they're called “light cruisers” in the first place when they're more like frigates…

Ugh… flu's going around again. This time it's the type that gives me a bad head cold AND makes my body ache all over. I don't have the worst of it though… one of my coworkers put himself in the hospital because he freaked out… he felt too weak to move.

I thought you didn't have to be a “Captain” to be a “captain”? That's how it is for many navies around the world. Comanders etc can be the captain of a ship and called “captain” while in that role, without holding that rank.

Tomorrow we interview Barb Jacobs on the Quackcast! -expert artist behind Return to Donnely, later known as Talisman, and currently doing http://www.xyliatales.com/10032007/
^_^

O god! I just realized that Hippie Wan sent me a PQ over a month ago but I never replied because I didn't know about it. She left couple of weeks later.

…it all makes sense now.

Yeah, Canadians are like that… kooky!
Just ask Banes if you don't believe me. ;)

Skoolmunkee's pretty much the same, she's from Idaho or Iowa or something, but she sounds pretty Canadian. You ever wonder why she's not around much now? Eh?
Well I'll tell you- she “found god”. No joke. Joined some sort of cult…
It's all very embarrassing, there's dancing, speaking in tongues, snake charming, Abba karaoke, the whole nine yards.
And if you confront her about it, she just says she “preys for you”.

Creepy :(

I'm preying for youuuuuuu

HOLLY B'JEEBAWHATSISTS!!!! OMFG!!

Scary.
I'm pretty sure she's serious.

“She got da prey!”
“PREY!!!”
“She got da prey!”
“PREY!!!”
“She got da prey and she'll eat it today!!!”

Sorry… could… not… re… sist……..

Youtube Video= MC Hammer: Pray

The cult is a pretty strange place. I'm pretty sure there's nudity involved though, so maybe that's why she's there?

Ahhhh! Another Quackcast DONE! Interviewd another of my webcomic heros:
http://www.xyliatales.com/07132008/
Barb Jacobs!
It went really well, she's a great talker, super smart and very interesting! This one was flying solo, without Banes along, but that's ok, we can tend to trip over each other sometimes. This should be an amazingly cool Quackcast with another real fricken bona-fide webcomic PRO!
^_^

-big smiles-

Man, don't you just LOVE it when things work OUT well!!!!!!

Looking forward to hearing this!

Quackcast without Banes…sweet! 'Bout time you removed that diseased limb!

Banes wrote:
Looking forward to hearing this!

Quackcast without Banes…sweet! 'Bout time you removed that diseased limb!

Madness, I tell you. MADNESS!!!
Made an honest attempt recording a tune from my brother's electric piano to a flash drive, but it failed while waiting for my job to call me to show up…

@gullas - haha! I kid, of course.

Your electric piano takes appointments for you? Sweet! XD

Hey everyone! Skool forgot to post this annoucement, so I annoy you for her. The Drunk Duck Awards voting has started now. Check out the comic for a link to the ballot. Also, I would love to have volunteers *hint* *hint*

Banes wrote:
Looking forward to hearing this!

Quackcast without Banes…sweet! 'Boat time you removed that diseased limb!

Whaaaaaarts this arll aboat, eh? Take orff, you hoooser!

Ha! I hope your comp will be in good enough shape for next week's cast! ^_^