I don't remember them having a satisfying send off from the Next Generation series… I mainly remember a stupid two part episode with a fat Q trying to squeeze into his costume from the first episode.
UGH, I hate hate hate those episodes where a character sits in judgement over the regular cast, it's so annoying. That ending to such a marvellous series was nothing short of insulting I felt- All that progress and interesting stuff happening for so many years and they gave us a lame attempt at a circular ending.

That is if the Next Gen actually ended that way. My memory for shows and movies sucks.

Is Picard actually worth watching?

ozoneocean wrote:

Is Picard actually worth watching?

Not at all.

But the enthusiasm some early reviewers have for season 3 have me interested in
seeing it. It's being billed as the final season.

I quit season one after about episode 8. I kept tabs on season 2 but only watched a tiny bit. Horrible.

There's still enough love in me for those characters that
I may check out season 3 but I won't ever touch seasons 1 or 2 xD

Ozoneocean wrote:

Is Picard actually worth watching?

Season One was bad. Second season got a lot better but I left around episode six because it was going in too many directions.

Both had some great Easter eggs for fans but after awhile it seemed like that was the only reason I was watching it. So I just subscribed to a YouTube channel that lists them.

And since I do the occasional Star Trek tribute in my comics I feel a certain obligation to keep tabs on this stuff.

After all ST:Disco did finally get good.

Did I mention I have a Star Trek:TOS crossover tribute plot line coming up in Interstellar_Battle_Girls? It'll be hinted in this week's pages. Did I just work in a plug for my comic? You bet I did.

I'm so bored that I keep refreshing the main page and checking out comics from 2007. also its like -15 here and i cant feel my legs

You need someone else to feel them for you :)

Early spring is in full force here already; it's going to over 70F/20C tomorrow, and I'm absolutely pissed about that. I'm so sick of one of my favorite months being desecrated by Climate Change like this.

On the opposite end of the planet here I'm glad I've had a few cool days for once :)

What do you think about all the Chinese spy balloons? Big once and small ones… they're really going nuts with balloons for some reason.
I can't believe the white-house has to assure people they weren't extra terrestrial in origin. LOL
We live in a world of morons, I find that scrary but also reassuring for some reason.

Ozoneocean wrote:

What do you think about all the Chinese spy balloons? Big once and small ones… they're really going nuts with balloons for some reason.
I can't believe the white-house has to assure people they weren't extra terrestrial in origin. LOL
We live in a world of morons, I find that scrary but also reassuring for some reason.

It's just a cover to draw everyone's attention from the release of Epstein's lists.

The way conspiratorial thinking works these days; if the government says they weren't extraterrestrial– guaranteed they were. They weren't balloons they were giant blancmange from 2,200,000 light years away. They're here for Wimbledon. (Monty Python science fiction sketch)

bravo1102 wrote:
It's just a cover to draw everyone's attention from the release of Epstein's lists.

Hahaha, their are people that believe that too XD

And now the Chinese are admitting it's their balloons with government tech, buuuuuuut “errrr, the USA did it first and they do it all the time, so you're a big doodyface and…. shutup!”

Oh China… if the USA ever does actually do that for real you're just as free to shoot them down. If you can.
All in all, quite an embarrassing mess for China

Ozoneocean wrote:

bravo1102 wrote:
It's just a cover to draw everyone's attention from the release of Epstein's lists.

Hahaha, their are people that believe that too XD

Oh China… if the USA ever does actually do that for real you're just as free to shoot them down. If you can.
All in all, quite an embarrassing mess for China

I work with them. Where do you think I heard it. ;D
American blue collar workers, Trump voters and conspiratorial thinkers. I'm up to my neck in them where I work. I love it.

As for the US balloons? We haven't used something that primitive in decades. We have Lockheed skunk works. They're still working their magic over at Groom Lake/Dreamland. Area 51 UFOs were a wonderful cover for it all these years.

bravo1102 wrote:
As for the US balloons? We haven't used something that primitive in decades. We have Lockheed skunk works. They're still working their magic over at Groom Lake/Dreamland. Area 51 UFOs were a wonderful cover for it all these years.

It's strange, obviously China isn't as technologically advanced as the USA in regards to high technology and high performance aircraft, but they have satellites and things, so I wonder what the balloons are for?

Maybe passive collection of things like encrypted radio communication traffic so they can attempt to decrypt later?
Collecting info on the patterns of use, location and direction of signals could also help them work out the disposition of domestic forces in the US and help determine the position of critical areas… Or maybe it's just as simple as finding the location of important communication infrastructure?

Seems until recently it was a hole in the NORAD defense. It was all about detecting high speed stuff like nuclear warheads not balloons. So they were exploiting a hole in our defenses until someone realized what was going on and they recalibrated the radar.
Them Chinese were smart. But we closed the hole.
Everyone thinks stuff needs to be fast and stealthy and such, when something slow can do just as well.

The slow blade penetrates the shield

Not in the mood to update. I want to get all these f idea fragments out of my head and make them into something great that fills me with passion and people love but doesn't take months to produce like a Blessed Days chapter. I'm so tired… three shifts in a row, because I have to fill in for someone,not even halfway through, but I can hardly stay awake after just 2 hours of work out of the 12. My mind is all foggy and probably will be for at least 2 more days. I don't wanna update until I can function again and am satisfied with something new.

I feel that. I work so much that I have on average less than 2 hours a day to draw. I have been doing page layouts on the bus but my drawing room (basically a small closet) is ice cold so have to heat it up for a while before I can do anything. I usually end up falling asleep first.

When it's very cold what I find useful is wearing a blanket like a skirt and a heated wheatbag and or cat on my lap…

But then the coldest it gets here is usually about 5 degrees Celsius outside so it's hard to judge… 15 Celsius inside.
Heaters always make me sleepy. They're terrible for creation.
—————

@Inky- in that situation it's best to just take a break from creating till you can recharge. Forcing yourself always just makes you feel worse because you can't make anything good when you're like that.

—————
@Bravo- you might be right about the recalibration. The smaller balloons were probably US civilian things that shouldn't have been flying where they were but no one noticed them for years so they got away with it.
I remember when Mythbusters did their balloon episode they had to get all sorts of clearances… not hard to imagine idiot hobbyists just flying stuff illegally without a care.

—————

My cat has been having breathing trouble for a while, I thought it was just something simple. I finally got worried and took her to the vet. Her trachea is collapsed. It's awful to watch her struggle to breathe and there's nothing I can do to help :(
It's a rare congenital condition. There's not much that can be done. She's a bit old for surgery so it's not really recommended. Steroid medication could only help in the short term.

It's weird because aside for coughing fits and weazy breathing she's fully active and alert, charging around the house, leaping up to high places, walking, running and eating without difficulty or hindrance.
Cats are like B-17 bombers- no matter the damage they just keep on going.

Thanks Ozone, but I can't stop the creative work, it just makes me nervous that I won't be able to resume later. Recharge for me looks like having all the time in the world to create without a worry, no work, no people, no nothing for weeks. Sadly, I have to pay the bills somehow so that's not gonna happen. Besides, today I wanna work on a fantasy-adventure, tomorrow I'll just wanna make porn that about 5 people would enjoy out of a 1000 here, tomorrow evening I'll feel like creating an experimental drama, etc, etc… I'm desparate to express whatever goes on inside my head even if it sucks and everyone hates it, but no project seems to be good enough to always just keep at it like a normal person would.

I'm real sorry to hear about your cat, I hope it will be somewhat managable, it must be awful to watch it happen day ba day, but it's great it gets looked after as much as circumstances allow it.

I've been there. It feels like I go through it every few months. Cycle up and cycle down. That's why I do schedules. The story keeps going no matter what happens in my cycle of life.

So many want to pump out the epic that'll bring everyone to our door and heap praise upon us. Then we won't let ourselves believe it. At the same time so many feel like a tiny voice in an empty theater. It's natural to feel that way. You're not alone. You want support you'd be surprised how supportive readers can be. Many are creators themselves and familiar with what you're experiencing.

I go on about it entirely too much and probably drive readers away with all my self flaggelation. Best thing is to just do it anyway. Sometimes its best to nake a schedule let the comic update itself. Post a pile of pages all spaced out on the calendar so it just putters along without you having to worry about it daily because there are plenty of other things to worry about in the day. Reducing the load by automating one piece of your life can be a good thing and part of self care.

Don't take care of yourself and there's no story, no matter how driven you are to create. You want to get everything you can before the well runs dry. Get the story told. But you do the story no good if you work so hard that you're physically or emotionally incapable of telling it.

Yeah, taking it from someone who goes through this, thus understands is a lot easier than from ppl who don't even read what I write or write themselves just dislike how much I occupy myself with it. I don't generally like automations and uploading my work prior to release online, but I think It's worth a shot to set it up that way while in my daily life, focusing on creating something much more simpler, with ease that still gives me satisfaction, until I'm ready again to write long chapters of a story not even halfway through. Thanks.

I think I may have proven all of the so-called “experts” on YouTube wrong in terms of all the things they tell me I do “wrong” about my channel content. They've told me things like I don't make my thumbnails right, that video titles are too vague and don't grab people's attention, that videos are too long because viewers want shorter videos, yadda yadda yadda.

So, with my most recent upload, I did exactly what they said I needed to do to bring attention to my content: I gave it the most gland and generic-looking thumbnail that looks exactly what everybody's YouTube thumbnails look like; I gave it an oddly specific title that describes exactly what it says on the tin; I kept the video incredibly short - approximately one minute in length; I even added captions, since apparently people actually use those.

Well, none of this did anything to boost any of my numbers in terms of views or likes or subs or anything . . . so, I wonder what I did wrong according to the so-called “experts” this time?

FWIW, this is my latest upload:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jx8I7MwgVIc

You would think that to include the name of one of the hottest rising stars in mainstream entertainment today in the title, as well as her image in the thumbnail would be enough of a draw to lure viewers in, but nope.

J_Scarbrough wrote:

FWIW, this is my latest upload:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jx8I7MwgVIc

You would think that to include the name of one of the hottest rising stars in mainstream entertainment today in the title, as well as her image in the thumbnail would be enough of a draw to lure viewers in, but nope.

I read the blurb posted below that upload, and you, Sir Scarbrough, are a funny one.

Why thank yuh!

Well, looks like I'm a statistic now: despite being vaccinated and boosted, I've tested positive for COVID . . . this is what I get to attending an overly crowded Toto and Journey concert last weekend.

Toto is still around?!

Yeah, but I couldn't even tell you half of the songs that they did that night, because the seats I had were absolutely terrible: other people just kept getting up and moving around, it was such a distraction.

As long as they did Africa and Rosanna :)

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I got a cowboy holster for a cosplay. I've wanted one for ages but never had the excuse to fork over the cash. They're pretty expensive, even for a cheap one. I could have made one myself but not of this quality.
It smells so leathery the smell is almost meaty.
Of course the first thing I do is strap it on low at the hips and play at quickdrawing with an old metal cap-gun. You can get surprisingly fast. It's much easier than with the plastic 1911 in the WW2 military holster.
Silly but fun.
A good distraction from the sadder parts of life anyway.

Ozoneocean wrote:
As long as they did Africa and Rosanna :)

As a matter of fact, they saved those songs for the end of their portion of the concert.

The only other song I can remember them performing was Joe Cocker's version of “With a Little Help from My Friends.”

Journey's portion of the concert, however, people weren't getting up and moving around as much as they did during Toto, so that was a much more enjoyable experience.

J_Scarbrough wrote:

Ozoneocean wrote:
As long as they did Africa and Rosanna :)

As a matter of fact, they saved those songs for the end of their portion of the concert.

The only other song I can remember them performing was Joe Cocker's version of “With a Little Help from My Friends.”

Journey's portion of the concert, however, people weren't getting up and moving around as much as they did during Toto, so that was a much more enjoyable experience.

I hope you feel better and recover quickly, J_Scarbrough.

Yeah, CoVid is nasty, I hope you get better soon!

J_Scarbrough wrote:
Journey's portion of the concert, however, people weren't getting up and moving around as much as they did during Toto, so that was a much more enjoyable experience.

For some reason I never heard of Journey until a few years ago.
It could just be that I was deaf to it and that it was everywhere and I just never noticed it but I really don't think so.
I think its more a case of it just never being marketed enough here in Australia to make regular radio playlists back when they were first popular, so it never had that second wave of popularity from the nostalgia market.

So what we have now in Australia is the 3rd wave of popularity of Journey, i.e. nostalgia from people that first heard it (in the USA and Canada), relayed through TV shows and movies, as well as the occasional YouTube retrospective.

It's strange, it reminds me of when stuff like Gridiron Football, Baseball, and other weird American traditions like Halloween, proms etc first started to become popular here- in the same 3rd hand way. We'd see references in movies and TV shows and have no idea what the reality was like.

And having lived with and through them all, I can honestly say that you're better off. Journey will come on the classic stations and I know every word.