Thread "2015 Rant/Share/General Discussion thread" in forum "Comic Talk and General Discussion *"

Posted at 1:07PM, Jul. 8, 2015

I really admire you guys taking the time and having the heart and energy to work on this - a hearty thanks to you!!

Posted at 2:07PM, Jul. 8, 2015

They're like a couple of Moses(es?) leading us out of the wilderness and into the promised land. I backtracked a few years to retrieve ozone's prophetic "the community always comes back" quote, but couldn't find it.

I didn't comeback empty handed though. Check out Hippie Van's awesome fish man from 2011!

Posted at 7:07PM, Jul. 8, 2015

Where does the time go? I recall that fishman like it was yesterday!

Posted at 8:07PM, Jul. 8, 2015

I believe there was a quackcast discussion in the first 100 episodes where skoolmunkee joked that the return of old members to Drunk Duck reflected the masochistic nature of the community. There should be a study on the personality types of our members. It is definitely that way for me, I think of Drunk Duck as an online club house, you know the one room in high school that random people hung out in during lunch to be themselves?

Posted at 2:07AM, Jul. 9, 2015

kawaiidaigakusei wrote:
you know the one room in high school that random people hung out in during lunch to be themselves?

Or Like one of those after-school clubs in Japanese Schools depicted in anime. Not enough girls to be a harem though. Though there is a slice of life geek anime surprisingly like this place.

Posted at 2:07PM, Jul. 9, 2015

Ironscarf wrote:They're like a couple of Moses(es?) leading us out of the wilderness and into the promised land. I backtracked a few years to retrieve ozone's prophetic "the community always comes back" quote, but couldn't find it. I didn't comeback empty handed though. Check out Hippie Van's awesome fish man from 2011!

Lavrentiy! He's still up on my living room wall. I also did a smaller frog/fish man a while back - I'll have to see if I can find a picture.

Posted at 7:07PM, Jul. 9, 2015

The first thing I saw when I opened up this thread was the fishman.
I saw it out of context, and it threw me way off. For a second, I wondered if I had stumbled into an archive..

Posted at 7:07PM, Jul. 9, 2015

Welcome back Komrade!

Posted at 8:07PM, Jul. 9, 2015

Spasibo vam!
Here's hoping I stay back this time.

Posted at 11:07PM, Jul. 9, 2015

This is the farthest thing from a rant I am about to post on this forum.

I was walking around a grocery store last night and I saw stacks of the most delectable morsels on the planet. What could I be talking about?

Well, obviously:

TIM TAMS!!

I tried my first Tim Tam about three years ago, but faced a heavy withdrawal because they are from the Land of Oz and the cost to ship them to the United States is around $10 per package. The store was selling them for $2.77 each, so it was quite a bargain.

I believe these things really are filled with happiness. I am saving a few so I can attempt a Tim Tam Slam the next time I visit a coffee place.

Posted at 1:07AM, Jul. 10, 2015

kawaiidaigakusei wrote:
TIM TAMS!!

I have been known to send care packages to people in North America that desire such items such as Tim Tams, Pineapple Lumps, Marmite, Chocolate Fish, and other antipodean delights.

Posted at 1:07AM, Jul. 10, 2015

Kawaii, those Tim Tams must really be good – they are making you positively grey with happiness! Wonder if I can find those here? Our supermarkets all seem to be stocking kangaroo meet but I haven't noticed any Oz confectionary.

KomradeDave wrote:
Spasibo vam!
Here's hoping I stay back this time.

Komrade Dave! I saw a comment you left on PinkyTA, but didn't dare to hope, lest it was just some kind of Davebot. Your moustache/sideburn combo is an inspiration - I will draw some on my ugly mush.

Posted at 3:07AM, Jul. 10, 2015

I went the whole hog and opted for the Hendrix perm. Looks more like Jason King after a really bad night.

Posted at 6:07AM, Jul. 10, 2015

Oh my Gosh! All the comics on the frount page are spam comics!

Posted at 7:07AM, Jul. 10, 2015

Not anymore!
I killed off the fucker >:D

JASON KING! You need one of those super tight fared leg suits he loved so much. It would suit you to a tee old chap. ;)

——

TimTams are just the thing for company. I never buy them for myself, wayyyy too decandant… but they're great to enjoy with friends, a real treat for an honoured guest. :D
All that chocolate…

Posted at 8:07AM, Jul. 10, 2015

I dig it, Scarf

Posted at 8:07PM, Jul. 10, 2015

Thank goodness for home made fruitfly traps. I had my doubts the things would work, but they did. No more fruit fly swarms (I'd love to know where they came from) while I'm trying to make myself into dinner. I'd show off a pic, but it's pretty gross to look at a LOT of dead fruitflies soaking in apple cider vinegar…

AAAND I dumped it out anyway. Gotta replace the apple cider vinegar when the trap gets full…

I think I've seen Tim Tams in some of the stores here. Not sure of the price as I don't really buy those. Then again we get lots of things from far off places (mostly the Oriental countries)… Like these cookies which I can't remember the name of, but they're definitely a knockoff of the Hydrox cookies. And apparently this knockoff is very popular in the mainland U.S…. O_O

Posted at 3:07AM, Jul. 11, 2015

I hope you're ok with all those typhoons floating around out there Lonne!

———

OK, DD is on the smallest, cheapest server space I can reliabl squeeze it onto now. As long as we stay within our limits we'll be fine. According to our usage stats we stay nicely within them normally so it should be cool.
BUT…
If we DO need more resources, we can sustainably afford to double them.

Now we should be getting about $50 or $60 in profit from our ads every month, after the bills are paid. Initially that will go to pay me back what I spent. THEN what do we do with it?
- That's not enough to pay for programming unless we save it for ages, and ages. (so kickstarter and Patreon are better solutions for that route.
- So I was thinking of going bay Gunwallace's suggestion and investing that money in advertising for the site to get more people reading our comics.

What do you think?

Posted at 7:07AM, Jul. 11, 2015

I'm on phone so can't elaborate much but we should sit down and make a viable strategy. What goals should we set?

I don't want to be a downer but I'm not so spending money to advertise DD is wise in its current state. And I'm not sure advertising a Patreon would do well either. The only advertising campaign I could see being useful is for if/when we do a kickstarter for the real deal.

Any thing done with the money should be looked at in a pro and con way. In a risk reward way.

I feel the risk of just advertising the site as is is higher than the potential reward. People may visit but they won't stay. They need a new purpose to stay. Visit drunk duck! Read comics! Share your comics! It sounds good till they get here and see all the limitations. Many better places to go.
But if it's to rebuild the community and help reshape it yourself. That could get people to stay!

Posted at 10:07AM, Jul. 11, 2015

I totally get where you're coming from JNP, but I didn't really mean advertising the whole site like that.
Rather what I'd be doing is focussing on some of the really popular on going comics, like make an ad for "The Pirate Balthazar, on drunk duck", or maybe an animated banner that has ads for 3 or 4 different DD comics.

The logic behind that is to get people in to be regular readers and visitors to the site through something tha people would really want to be regulars for: reading a comic that they like. Then they can maybe branch out when they feel like it, become creators…

The other thing to do with the money is save it for a rainy day: stockpile it a bit at a time.
That to me doesn't make too much sense because the amount is so little; even several months it won't be that much, certainly not enough to do anything serious with.
I dunno, maybe saved money could go towards spceial patreon or Kickstarter rewards?

Posted at 4:07PM, Jul. 11, 2015

Every little bit helps when trying to save. Hopefully nothing catastrophic happens that will force you to use it… like a string of supertyphoons knocking on your door.

Or rather… knocking it down… along with your entire house… :)

(addon 7-13-15)
Well… surfing the net makes me learn new things. Such as a game called L.A. Noire (what is "noire"?). took nearly 8 years to make, a ton of money, and the well being of its developers. And it was apparently lead by a "tyrranical" Brendan McNamara who screamed at his people at the slightest provocation.

There goes my mental image of a video game development team… programmers sitting in front of their computers surrounded by coffee mugs, Mountain Dew 2 liter bottles, and near empty pizza boxes while shooting each other with Nerf guns… Now I'm thinking more of… "Chinese sweat shops"…

Posted at 7:07AM, Jul. 13, 2015

I think being shouted at is the price they pay for the Nerf-gunlifestyle :)

Posted at 9:07PM, Jul. 14, 2015

#Nerflife :D

OMG-jebus-fark!
I had a cold on the weekend and since then I've been geeting bad headaches every day. Which is anoying because for various reasons I've been free of migraines for a while now…
ANyway, my pills kill the headaches dead pretty easily, but the TROUBLE is that one of the sides effects of the pills is extreme irritability. EVERYTHING pisses me off.
…Including the fact that eveything pisses me off.

I'm less used to the side FX because I haven't had to take many of those pills for a long time.

Posted at 9:07PM, Jul. 15, 2015

ozoneocean wrote:
I think being shouted at is the price they pay for the Nerf-gunlifestyle :)

From what I've read over the ears, the "nerf gun lifestyle" is what game development used to be. Then the "suits" took over. From what I'm seeing, the big game publisher/development companies are being run by either game designers who have very swelled heads, or marketeers who are not gamers at all, both forcing their developers into cubicles for over 60+ hours a week, especially during "crunch time".

And then promptly firing them when the game is done if it didn't sell well.

And now the lifestyle is back now that indie development teams are on the rise. And I'm sure the creator of Minecraft is chilling out in his mansion… he pretty much deserves it (he did get a billion dollars from that game after all). :)

Sorry about the cold, Ozone. Being sick really sucks… :(

Posted at 9:07PM, Jul. 17, 2015

Oh man, it's been a crazy couple of weeks. More about that later tomorrow. I just feel like I should share with people how lovely I feel right now. I've just washed up and crawled into a lovely soft bed; I've got Annie lying on my chest purring away and I'm listening to Sam Cooke. I really couldn't be more content. I'm not sure if it's the calm in contrast to a hectic few days or just that I've got a few drinks in me, but either way it's a nice feeling.